Financially Legal

Nika Kabiri is a JD, a PhD a decision science consultant, a teacher, and a writer. If that’s not enough for you, just know she’s a rock star. Previously Nika was the Director of Strategic Insights at the online legal marketplace Avvo. Whether through market research, tireless and effective advocacy, or her amazing public speaking skills in that role Nika helped Avvo and the legal industry better u...

Subscription-based outsourced fractional general counsel sounds like a mouthful, but it’s not really that complicated. A fixed monthly fee for part of a lawyer’s time offering business advice to a company. Beth Lebowitz believes that this model is as good for lawyers as it is for clients. In fact, she’s so committed to it that she’s founded both a law firm, Nimbus Legal, a marketplace/community, A...

Lawyers can usually think of lots of possible reasons why trying something new in your practice is “against the rules.” Megan Zavieh is a California state bar defense attorney (who lives in Georgia!) and she’s not treading lightly. Instead, she’s launching a subscription legal services offering, cheering regulatory changes related to non-lawyer ownership, and breaking down the rules around shiftin...

It’s common for dentists or doctors to sell their practices but far less common for lawyers to do so. And a Zillow-like marketplace for law practices? Forget about it. And yet, that’s just what Tom Lenfestey is doing. Tom has built his business, The Law Practice Exchange , to increase liquidity in a market for law practices and evangelize the buying and selling of law practices as a legitimate opt...

Our recent podcast on how lawyers talk to clients about money inspired Gravity Legal’s own Emery Wager to think about how lawyers had talked to him about money. A client of many lawyers at Gravity Payments (our parent company), Emery came up with a list of five things he wishes lawyers would do when they talk to clients about money . We dig in on this mini-episode of Financially Legal.

Greg Garman is a busy man. One of the founders of a 20 person law firm in Las Vegas, Greg is also the co-founder and CEO of LAWCLERK, an online marketplace for freelance legal help. In this episode, Greg shared some great insights on how and why he thinks right around 20 lawyers is the sweet spot for a small law firm. He also makes a convincing case for how and why the freelance or gig economy is...

Conventional wisdom is that there are really only two reasons that marriages end: sex and money. Sex with a client is frowned on and talking about it - except, perhaps as a part of the representation - is probably not a great idea. However, conversations with clients about money can be some of the most important conversations you have with them. How, when and what you say when you talk to clients...

Jacqueline Horani is a lawyer engaged in integrative consulting and plain language law in New York City. Inspired by the integrative law movement, Jacqueline is building a practice around the practice of conscious contracting, which focuses on identifying and integrating the parties’ values directly into the contracting process. She also has built a complex and comprehensive process to financially...

Geri Green and Cynthia Chandler have been fighting for marginalized individuals both in and out of courts for decades. In this episode of Financially Legal we talk about how and why, according to the 2019 Clio Trends report , civil rights attorneys realize so little of what they work (20% - the lowest of any practice area) and collect for so little of what they realize (80% - third or fourth lowes...

Seth Bloom is the Sr Director of Attorney Services at Levelset. If you’re not familiar with Levalset, it’s a company that helps all kinds of contractors, but particularly those in the construction space get paid and focus on what they like to do. It’s most relevant for legal professionals because those contractors often file, manage, and – when things go south – litigate liens. Enter Seth and the...

Erin Giglia is the Co-Owner of Montage Legal Group. As you’ll hear, Montage was founded more than a decade ago to exploit a “gap in the marketplace between freelancers and law firms.” Since then the model that Erin and her co-founder Laurie established has been emulated, adapted and admired by firms and freelance legal business across the legal sector. Erin is incredibly insightful about how and w...

Kim Bennett got burned by hourly billing. She lost a bunch of money and, having come up as a young lawyer in a corporate, in-house role, the model didn’t make sense to her. One day she pitched a client on a recurring monthly fee and, to her surprise, they accepted. That’s right, we’re talking subscriptions again. But where the guest from our last subscription-based law practice, Jon Tobin, uses al...

I know you didn’t go to law school to manage financial books or be an accountant, but it turns out that your ability to successfully support and represent your clients is contingent upon running a sound financial business. And Chelsea Williams, founder, and head of Core Solutions Group is dropping some wisdom about how to manage your firm’s finances so that you can worry less about money and more...

Jon Tobin is running one of the most innovative law firms you’ve never heard of. Counsel For Creators is an LA-based law firm for creatives and entrepreneurs that sells a subscription to clients. In this episode of Financially Legal, we talk with Jon about the inspiration behind his subscription legal services plan, how he made it a reality, how (amazingly) it’s morphing into a profitable, self-su...

Dan Price is a big deal. Full stop. And we got him on the podcast. The inspirational CEO of Gravity Payments. In 2015 Dan announced that he would raise the salaries of each of his employees to $70,000 annually. In doing so Dan became an overnight business celebrity. He’s been on the Today show, been interviewed by Trevor Noah, and keynoted hundreds of business conferences...

We get nerdy this episode talking accounting, trust accounting, and regulatory jazz with Lainie Hammond.   Lainie runs a law firm in Washington State helping lawyers with issues related to IOLTA trust account compliance. Seriously, though, we dig in on the what and why of both trust and IOLTA accounts, how lawyers get into trouble trying to manage their finances, and how they can keep out of...

Today, we're excited to be having a conversation with John E. Grant, the Agile Attorney. John is a compelling thinker when it comes to law firm economics, law firm efficiency, and law firm productivity. In today's episode, he shares some of the valuable lessons he learned from his experience while working for Getty Images. Be sure to listen in, to find out what John learned about growing and build...

Welcome to the very first episode of Financially Legal, with your host, Dan Lear, head of partnerships and marketing at Gravity Legal.     There's a growing recognition today, that to grow, build, or scale anything meaningful, it's not enough to simply understand the law. Modern, small business owners really need to have a wide variety of disciplines at their fingertips, and they need to...