Episode 75: Erin Levine
Founder and CEO of Hello Divorce
00:59:06
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Show Notes
Erin Levine is the founder of Hello Divorce, an online divorce platform that provides software to complete legal forms and connects users to lawyers (if they want legal advice). Erin leveraged her legal experience running her own law firm focused on family law and her own experience as a litigant in the legal system to create Hello Divorce's user-centric platform. Erin's company is at the intersection of legal tech and access to justice and is at the center of efforts to revamp laws governing the practice of law. Listen in to hear Erin's entrepreneurial journey and cutting edge issues in legaltech.
This episode is powered by Documate.
Relevant episode links:
Hello Divorce, Documate, ABA, Maya Markovich – Lawyerpreneur Podcast Past Episode, Justice Technology Association
About Erin Levine
Erin Levine
I am a Certified Family Law Specialist* and since 2005, have practiced solely in the East Bay community that I love. In addition to being a lawyer, I am also a passionate business owner and entrepreneur and enjoy developing relationships with various local professionals in our community who often play a significant role in the outcome of family law matters.
By maintaining relationships with local experts such as co-parenting counselors, forensic accountants, judicial officers, mediators and child custody evaluators, I firmly believe that my clients benefit from a more holistic approach to legal problem solving.
My approach to family law is guided by my own experience with the legal system. When I was a child, I was the victim of violence. As a teen, I was the plaintiff in a civil action and a witness in a criminal action. It was stressful, intimidating, and confusing. It felt as if procedure triumphed over substance. I don’t want you to feel that way, ever. It’s disempowering and unproductive. It leaves you exhausted instead of ready to embark on a fresh start. My style is to keep my focus on your family and your issues.
Transcript
I’m very excited to venture back into the world of legal tech and some new ways to encourage access to justice with Erin Levine, who is the President and CEO of Hello Divorce. Welcome, Erin.
Thank you. It is great to be here.
I want to delve into your company and what you are adding to the legal landscape but first, I want to talk about you a little bit in terms of how you came to the law, what interested you in going to law school in the first place, and why and how you found the law.
I have a lot of contact with the law. Ever since I was a child, my father was a trial attorney, and he would practice his interrogation techniques, trial opening arguments, and all of that stuff with us around the dinner table growing up. I had some interest in the law. It was familiar to me, so I was fortunate for that. It was exciting to me but then I forgot about that as I went to junior high and high school, and at that point, I focused on my creativity and the stuff I loved in that world.
In my late teens, I was re-introduced to the legal system. This time, I was a plaintiff in a Civil case and a witness in a Criminal case. Both cases were against the same man who was my gymnastics coach. Unfortunately, he was quite abusive, and I obtained justice in the traditional sense of the word. He went to prison for a little while. I’ve got money to help me pay for college but the whole experience of being within the legal system was really disempowering and scary to me.
It felt like I was being re-triggered every step of the way. It felt very lonely and opaque. I felt like we could do better, and so that got me interested again in the law. I went for very altruistic reasons. Initially, I wanted to change the system. I went to law school, and then I’ve got involved in the nonprofit public interest world and expected that when I graduated from law school, I would continue on in that world. Unfortunately, that is not what happened.
I did not get the jobs that I thought would be easy to get, so I had to step back and say to myself, “What area of law might be a good fit for my skills, expertise, and interests?” Family Law came to mind because it would give me that opportunity to not only advocate for people under the law but also help guide them through a scary, overwhelming process, which is similar to what I experienced. That is how I ended up in Family Law.
There are a lot of different pieces to that, and that is a journey in a lot of different ways. First, starting out with understanding what it means to be a lawyer and having lawyers in the family. I understand practicing the arguments of the table. I still practice my appellate arguments with my parents. Does this theme resonate with you? I can imagine that is some of the same things that your dad did.
It is a very different thing to be a party in the legal system as you were in a very vulnerable way. There is an aspect even in the Civil realm where you don’t have control over it once it started. It has a life of its own, which is what we observe as lawyers not being parties to things say, “Once you start a piece of litigation, it has its own life, and you lose control over what goes on.” In a situation like yours, where you are particularly feeling pretty vulnerable already that it can be scary because you are like, “I thought I would regain or have some empowerment from this, and I’m not feeling that.” It can be hard.
It was challenging in and of itself dealing with the legal system, and that I expected, having been fortunate enough to sit with my dad at a couple of settlement conferences and even go to trial with him. If you can imagine when that was allowed, he would parade me in front of the jury if you can believe it. What I did not expect was the lack of transparency and communication with my plaintiff’s lawyer, who was excellent.
She was an absolutely excellent lawyer. She did exactly what she was supposed to do in terms of the case progression, what our ultimate result was but her goal was to win. That is how we ordinarily judge lawyers, their ability to win. To do that, she needed to create enough evidence about, A) All the things I had been through and, B) How they might affect me at that moment and going forward.
These experts would talk at length about all the struggles I would have in my life because of the abuse I suffered as a child. That I was not prepared for, and then I was also not prepared for the cross-examination that I would experience with the other side. I knew there would be hard questions but I did not realize how traumatic it would be. That is what I took from that experience. It is not the legal process itself, how long it takes to set hearings and what is in the pleadings but the experience is so often shaped by the relationship that we have with our lawyer and their team.
That is something that is in much higher relief to us as lawyers when we represent individuals, companies or institutions. They may not be the same level of emotion that is going on and ways that we need to be empathetic to our clients as well. I experienced that. It is a little bit different. When you are a party to something, there is a whole bunch of stress going on from that whatever gave rise. Nobody chooses first to go to court. There are a lot of other things that have proceeded that have already been challenging.
It is interesting to me, too, in your story, in terms of how you have redirected things. When you said, “I’m going to make a difference. I’m going to do this, and I know exactly what I want to do. I’m going to do public interest,” but then that was not coming to fruition the way you expected it would, and then you had to redirect that and say, “Where can I make a difference that might be something a little different than I had envisioned?” That is a form of resilience and grit that is super important for all of us to have to press forward and be successful. How did that end up? How did you enjoy doing Family Law? Did it turn out to be a good combination of how you thought you could make a difference?
I enjoyed it immensely for a long time until I did not. I started with the firm that said I could get into court on the second day of employment, and at that time, I thought that is what it meant to be a good lawyer to be in court all the time making big arguments. I was younger. That was exciting to me. I took some relatively big and interesting cases for Family Law and almost all of them to trial.
I’ve got known in this small community that I was practicing. Even at the time, I lived in Oakland and San Francisco, I practiced in an area that was about an hour and a half away. It was a much smaller town and community and a great way to learn the law because there were so many faces that you would see regularly, from the bailiff to the attendant, lawyers, and clerks. You felt well supported, and you could build a community of support. That was all lovely.
As I continued on my professional journey, I started to realize that most people can’t afford a lawyer, and if they can, the last thing that they want to do is spend all their money on one. I also started to get attuned to the fact that in Family Law, what a lawyer considers to be a win might be very different from what the client does.
As an example, we might, as lawyers, push for that extra $50 in child support because this customer has been victimized and controlled her whole relationship. It is time to teach him or her a lesson, and she should get what she deserves. In reality, when we talk to our clients and learn about where they are coming from and moving through the emotional journey with them, sometimes we land on a goal very different.
There will always be conflict, but when we can channel it toward a win-win scenario versus a win-lose, we have to give that a shot.
I want to preserve our relationship as much as possible so that we can co-parent together. I want to shift the narrative because whatever was happening before is not working, and now, we have to deal with each other going forward because of the kids. That is a very different goal from, “I’m going to get the most amount of child support I possibly can.”
I started to shift more into settlement negotiations, mediation, private arbitration, and doing more of that risk-benefit cost analysis with my clients, which was a lot more fulfilling. Ultimately, when I had children, it was a lot easier to manage. I became a Certified Family Law Specialist, and I started to do quite well. I opened my own firm back in 2009, and life was going well until I burnt out. It happens.
I burnt out partially because I was working so many crazy hours and managing a team but I also burnt out because I felt like a complicit participant in a system that was routing people through war. Even if I or my client came in well-intentioned if there were any types of disagreements, the jurisdiction that I was in meant that you would go to court. I started to see and look around the courtroom, talk to customers, do surveys and learn how damaging that process was and is. It felt like it is a good time to start transitioning into something new.
You saw some gaps in the system where you did not think people were necessarily being holistically served. Let’s think of it that way in terms of there are many goals, especially in Family Law, it is an ongoing situation, especially if there is custody or things like that because people are, “You can go into court very quickly and many times.” That, in itself, has its own impact, and then, of course, people might want to have other things happen like a relationship that works to parent and child at a certain point or things like that.
There are a lot of things that are almost extra-legal in terms of the considerations. You acted as an entrepreneur in that situation in terms of saying, “There are things that can be served in other ways.” You mentioned some surveying or things like that, where you are doing surveys of the landscape to see how those gaps might be filled.
I had read the dismal net promoter score for most lawyers being 25, and that absolutely terrified me. I later did what I hear they call the design world but not something that we usually do as lawyers a design sprint where I interviewed hundreds of people who had been through a divorce, was considering divorce or are in the process itself to get a sense for what was going wrong and what was working.
Backing up a moment, you bring up a very important point that I want to touch on. There are people that, no matter what, we will have to litigate, either there is an emergency like they have been blocked from finances or their kids, mental health issue, or a wildly aggressive attorney on the other side, and there is no way to avoid court, and that I understand.
What interests me is the situation that we see in the movie the Marriage Story, which is about a couple that wants an amicable divorce. No one wants a long, messy, ugly, and expensive divorce. Things get out of hand, and with everything being so opaque and legal, X versus Y, petition or complaint, you are being served with a lawsuit. It scares people, and when people are scared, they do irrational things.
My goal was to say, for that 5% of people that no matter what is going to have to go to trial, that is not where I’m best suited to help. For most people who can resolve their issues outside of court or with less court intervention are the people that I want to help, not just the people who have a full agreement or short-term marriage. I knew that a lot of the people that had walked into my law firm were the same type of people that maybe did not need a full-scope lawyer to get things resolved. Does that make sense on what the thought pattern there?
Yeah. People come in different situations, whether it is inevitably high conflict or needs to be worked out on each side of the V situation in terms of what happens. I have friends as well who were like, “We would like to resolve this with as little challenge as possible, and it can be challenging to do that within the system because it is built in an adversarial way.”
You much more articulate it but that is exactly what my thought process was. I had no idea if it was going to work at all. I had seen limited scope services, which most of your readers, I’m sure, are familiar with but I had never seen a more flexible choose-your-own-adventure approach, and that is what I set my mind to.
I wanted to get into that in terms of where you have ended up in the various options. Some people understand the limited scope, and some people don’t. It is unique to Family Law. It is a unique defense. In certain contexts, in Family Law, particularly in California, you can hire a lawyer for one part of your case. I want you to do this motion, this trial, and particular things. It is a limited scope engagement.
For most things, you are the lawyer in the case and for everything. You are the lawyer on the hook for everything that happens or does not happen, or does not get done. That is a unique beast in Family Law but that is still a limited scope within the context of an adversarial proceeding in a trial court. You are basically being called up for particular battles instead of the overall war. There is a germ of an idea in that that you could marry with the other thing that you noticed in terms of some people don’t want to go into combat at all. They don’t want any battle, much less war, if we can avoid it.
There will always be conflict. We can’t avoid that but whether we can channel it toward to a win-win scenario versus a win-lose, let’s do it. Let’s give that a shot.
It requires both sides who want that and are willing to do that because sometimes that can be the challenge too when one side wants to keep having a battle because for whatever reason.
Yes and no. I truly believe that the average adult does not want a long and messy divorce but they are scared. For the most part, women are scared of losing their children. Men are scared of not having enough money or vice versa, and because of that, they feel like they need to fight and battle. I cannot tell you how many people came to Hello Divorce started on their own with a spouse that was writing emails and texts like, “I’m lawyering up. I’m going to do X, Y and Z,” but ultimately came around and were able to negotiate a resolution. I’m an optimist. I’m always going to think that there are more people who want to settle than not but time will tell. We have done a few thousand divorces. At some point, can we do a million? I don’t know. We will find out.
It is always interesting to hear how ideas come together to create a new venture, new idea, and new way of doing things. You have pointed to different aspects of your own experience and then what you saw both as a litigate yourself and as a lawyer. How did you put this together to come up with the initial template for how you would put together Hello Divorce?
I had my experience in the law, and in this design sprint, where I have now interviewed bazillion people, and then I did a lot of research. I wanted to know what was out there, what had worked, and what was innovative but maybe hadn’t worked. Was it because of the product or the marketing? I see that a lot in legal tech.
The vast majority of Americans can’t afford a lawyer, and because of that, we're failing them. Even if every single lawyer did pro bono work, it still wouldn't be enough.
I see lawyers that are subject matter experts make the most incredible product or technology there is known to the universe but that is only one small piece. You have to be able to market it and get customers. I was trying to decipher that. I had learned by that point that 75% of divorces have at least one self-represented party. I also did research and found out that some of these companies that do DIY divorce were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in marketing and Google spend.
That said, to me, two things. One is there is a market here. The other is, this is problematic because, as your lawyers will know, and all of us have seen that terrible case where somebody waives everything because they did not know, and then through a DIY process and they come back to you and/or want you to fix it.
What happens more often than that with DIY is that you have all these forms, and you have no way to navigate the complicated submission guidelines. There is nothing that we can do technology-wise yet to streamline that across the country because not only does every state have different rules, not just county but each court. It is absurd. I’m sure you have talked about this before.
I was already very skeptical of DIY, and yet I felt that it had its place and that we needed to do it in a more responsible way. For people who truly can’t afford any help, you have to give them the best option you can under the circumstances. I initially spun it out as part of my law firm. You then have less concerned around regulations and what you can or can’t do.
I did not have a huge spend on technology. I knew that our team was going to have to jump in and help these clients a lot, which is something you can obviously do in a law firm, in a way that is challenging outside the law firm. We started with instructional templates for all the forms you have to do for your divorce and instructional videos. That was the first minimum viable product, if you will.
The goal there was to see whether or not people would purchase, and if so, could they be successful? Meaning can they get through their divorce, start to finish, with some peace of mind. The answer very quickly was yes. The next version of that product was a web application for Californians and only Californians, which allowed people to complete their forms using software that we integrated with our own.
Dorna Moini, one of your previous guests, is [the CEO of the company whose software we used to do that]: Documate. The customers would complete those forms, and we would ask questions in a way that would hopefully elicit a response that made sense because legal forms are complicated. Plain English, do these questions, see how people respond, and then their forms would be completed. From there, to the extent that they needed or wanted additional help from a lawyer or legal team to help file and serve or get advice, they could add it in 30-minute increments or more.
That was the genesis. We are always changing because it is so important to continue to adapt to your clientele and do everything you can to meet their needs. What we have ultimately ended up with are products and services. A product can be purchased to simply guide you through all of the procedural requirements and forms to get your divorce done.
In most scenarios, meaning a large majority of what our customers choose is called our Pro Plan, and that allows the customer to use our software to prepare their forms. Our team jumps in to file, serve them, coordinate with their spouse, and at all the appropriate intervals. If the customer wants to, they can purchase time with a lawyer, a mediator or a certified divorce financial analyst.
Usually, that comes in after step two. Step two, we consider to be the financial disclosures, then once you get there, the question is, “Do you understand the finances? Do you think you’ve got everything you need, and what would be a reasonable, fair solution under the circumstances?” Depending on the situation, one professional might be better than the other for their case.
I hadn’t thought about the financial part but that is an important aspect of having someone review that or help you go through that from a financial expert standpoint. Are the lawyers who people can purchase some consultation time, are those also part of the company or are those independents who works through Hello Divorce?
I would love them to be. My goal would be to hire lawyers directly and allow them to participate in our employee stock plan, keep the same hours and not be dependent on billable work. Now, except for Utah, which we are in the regulatory sandbox, which is exciting, we cannot employ lawyers directly. What I have created is a method by which customers can purchase legal coaching time through the Hello Divorce platform but entering into an attorney-client agreement with my law firm and the law firm employees or contracts with lawyers and the states that we are operating in.
You still have the situation of your firm and the company. If people wanted to go to court for something or they had a particular need for court intervention, then one of those attorneys could also do that part of it too?
Most often, it would be a referral out, which we haven’t monetized. It is just, let’s get you to a lawyer that would be a good fit. Law can be so localized, and the home-court advantage is so important because a lawyer in Colorado or California does not mean that that is the right lawyer to represent you if you have to go to court. If it is in the Bay Area, my team can do it, no problem, and transitioning is quite nice. If it is a case down in Los Angeles and our attorneys are up in the Bay Area or even in Santa Barbara, Ventura or Central California, then that wouldn’t be the right fit.
I did not know if you had people all around the state or whether you were still in the Bay Area with the law firm.
Our lawyers are in big cities but it depends. There is not enough volume to have 30 to 40 lawyers on the team everyday taking calls from the Hello Divorce customers. That is how we are handling it.
How do you reach people in terms of understanding that they have the option to work through your platform?
You can't run a company without thinking about what might go wrong and spotting when there’s an issue that needs to be resolved.
It is a combination of a lot of things. The first and only for quite some time has been word of mouth, social media, and connecting with other industry professionals who I felt would resonate with our structure and plan. There was a lot of that early on, and then we moved to other methods of marketing, everything from podcast advertising to Google AdWords and some other more creative ways. I spend a lot of time speaking, being on podcasts, hosting webinars, and getting the word out there, and that has been helpful. The American Bar Association has been supportive as well, getting the word out and letting people know that we exist.
Aren’t you one of the legal rebels this year for the ABA?
I’m a legal rebel, and then in February of 2020, before we’ve all got word of the shutdown of the pandemic, I won the James I. Keane Memorial Award for excellence in eLawyering. That gave me a great platform to talk about what we are doing and how justice technology is so important to our team and me but it also got us a lot more exposure. That was exciting.
I know there have been some efforts or interest in justice tech and access to justice, especially in Utah. Arizona has also been moving towards the sandbox model that you mentioned in terms of trying different models of serving people who have legal problems. Can you explain how you have it set up in Utah? How is that working?
California is also considering modifying some of these regulations or starting a sandbox. I had the opportunity to speak in front of the California State Bar as well, which was exciting. The way I frame it is this, first of all, I and several founders have direct to consumer justice technology companies formed an association called the Justice Technology Association. Our goal, among other things, is to help shape the new regulatory frameworks that are being considered, given the fact that we have a direct connection and are working daily with the consumers who are consuming these services.
This can be a pretty hot button issue regulatory change, and I absolutely understand why. No one wants to lose their ability to practice law or affect change. Some people are concerned about the cheapening of the profession of clients not getting the service and legal help that they need. The bottom line is that the vast majority of Americans can’t afford a lawyer, and because of that, we are failing them. Even if every single lawyer did pro bono work, it is still would not be enough. We are failing our society, and so something has to change, and I’m not sure what it is yet. What I do know is that a state like Utah or Arizona allowing corporations to employ lawyers directly.
These lawyers have the same ethical duties that they would be bound by if they were employed by a law firm. Allowing these corporations to take investment so that they can hire people outside of the legal industry to strategize and create services that work for consumers is wonderful. What we have now is stifling innovation. In Utah, for example, you can not only employ lawyers directly if you are in the sandbox but you can also offer legal services.
The stuff that paralegals ordinarily do, you are allowed to do if a lawyer is supervising. Whereas ordinarily, you can’t offer legal services. You can offer technology that helps people with forms. You can structure legal services in a way that you can use your law firm so long as you are not fee-splitting. Anything short of that is considered the unauthorized practice of law and is problematic because some of the greatest paralegal minds in the country work for companies like mine, and yet they are not allowed to be a paralegal or to use their legal knowledge to help people because it is considered the unauthorized practice of law.
Under the arrangement you have in Utah, are there particular things that you think you could do differently or more of that you can’t explain how it is set up here in California with the law firm adjunct and maybe even additional law firm referrals? Does it operate more smoothly in Utah or is there something more in terms of the services or how comprehensive you can be in helping clients?
All of the above. We have managed to do whatever we can to try to make the experience as smooth as possible for customers but it still is confusing when you have a relationship with two different companies, two different invoices, and teams. We have to be very careful to keep the law firm separate from the company, and that makes it challenging. It would be so much easier, not just for consumers but regulators as well, if they had one entity to regulate over as opposed to what some of us have had to do so that we can provide comprehensive services by splitting into a two-entity service model. That is an important point to bring up.
The flexibility with being able to have our non-lawyers who do have significant experience in the legal industry be able to say things like, “This seems pretty complicated. Maybe you want to speak with a lawyer.” In the vast majority of states, we are not allowed to even say that because that is considered the unauthorized practice of law. That is frustrating to me to not be able to let people use the knowledge that they have acquired in all these years of practicing. The same thing goes for me, as a lawyer after my law firm, I can give legal advice but I would not dare do it as the CEO and Founder of Hello Divorce.
It stifles innovation because I’m willing to draw down the profits 100% and cover expenses through my law firm because I have a dream to make Hello Divorce the one-stop shop that most Americans go to get their divorce done. How many people would do that? How many people have access to a law firm that they could use? How many people that want to help consumers are lawyers, so they would be able to have their own law firm? It makes it challenging to get people to try something new because of the concern that is what I’m doing and going to constitute fee-splitting or constitute the unauthorized practice of law.
It sounds like you have your law firms still but there are others who are providing the services. In other words, Erin Levine is not in court all the time. How do you see some of the skills that you had as a practicing lawyer for so many years? How do those translate to your new role in terms of being a founder and an entrepreneur?
Lawyers oftentimes make great founders. Also, we have to watch out because we tend to think of everything so nuanced that it can freeze us because we think of everything that could possibly go wrong, and we are generally risk-averse. For the most part, I see it as a real benefit. It is issue spotting. You can’t run a company without thinking about what might go wrong and spotting when there is an issue that needs to be resolved. The other is our negotiation skills and the skills that we use even when we are in court to persuade a judge. These are not only analytical but they also help resolve conflict, and help deal with personality differences and the company itself. It is so helpful because that is the hardest part of running a company.
If you put money at something, you can do anything. You can build technology and buy ads but if you can’t get your team to get along and build something together, then you have nothing. Those skills that I learned as a lawyer, negotiator, and mediator, have saved me, and I have been far more important than I ever thought.
The other stuff we can learn. Lawyers are not scared to work hard. We know how to work hard, research, and find information. Everything you don’t know about being an entrepreneur, you will learn along the way. There is no rush but some of the core stuff you need to have is already intrinsic to us, which is exciting.
People will always say, “A lot of degrees are so valuable. You can use it in so many different ways.” Quantifying that and breaking it down like, “No. Here are the different ways that you can do that.” I would say, particularly in your case, you discovered what you thought was a gap in services and a need for litigants because you are a lawyer. It is almost like you needed all your experiences to be brought together and then learn other things on top of that to be where you are now. You wouldn’t have discovered the need as a founder for this, and then, of course, you had the tenacity to pursue it and figure out a way to bridge the service gap that you saw.
My background and experience in law are essential to my path forward. For all intents and purposes, I’m not your typical startup founder. I have two kids. I’m a woman. The odds were stacked against me but I did not know that at that time.
The ability to bring in information, filter it and adjust course is what makes us human and what often makes companies most successful.
It is best not to know that stuff. You don’t know it then. You go ahead, and then you might discover it partway through but it is nice not to know because you will do things that you did not know you are not supposed to do.
It was like, “I have this vision. I’m going to try it out. I’m going to see where it takes me,” not, “I’m going to start a company, be a startup founder or raise capital.” That is not what was going through my head at that time.
It is more like you are following the path to achieve what it is you want to achieve in terms of your vision, and it requires all these other things along the way.
Yes, which lawyers are great at. We can figure that stuff out along the way.
That is a great observation. We don’t always know directly the answer but we feel comfortable that we can do some research and we might know where to look or we can ask and get some tips on where to look for the answer. To some degree, even though we do tend to be risk-averse if it is something new, we learn new areas of the law all the time. We know that we can read up on stuff. We have that sense of adventure from that that leaves us open to things. We will say, “We don’t know that but we will read some books, ask some questions to people, and follow the trail to how we might figure this thing out.”
The other thread that I have often heard on the show is that people, in retrospect, look at things and say, “Yes. All of these various threads make sense, and we have been tracing those in this episode so far for you,” but then at the end, it is the same thing. When I look back, I can see all of these things together. That makes sense that this is why I would be here and where I could contribute the most but along the way, I might not have seen this coming at all. It is like a little windy path, shall we say? Do you have any tips for those who might be interested in an entrepreneurial venture, who have legal training, and maybe it will be in legal tech or other aspects of entrepreneurial business? Do you have any tips for people who might be considering that now that you’ve done it?
I would get clear on the vision, which can change but ultimately, if this is successful, how would it change the world, community, and your life? The other thing that I would do is take small steps because they do add up if you make small steps. If you are interested in becoming an entrepreneur or you are but you want to switch your focus from your law firm to something else, then get an action plan in place and check things off as you go because everything adds up. Everybody could have a good idea but very few bring that to fruition, and lawyers are in a position where they can do that. We are skilled at executing. If that is your dream to try something new, do it.
One thing I will say is that people always ask me, “How did you like transition? How did you go from being a lawyer to an entrepreneur? What is the magic or secret? How did you do it?” In all honesty, for me, it was hard work. I ran my law firm and practiced law while I was building this business. It was launched in January of 2018. It was not until years ago that I could fully step away from practicing law.
If you are fortunate enough to be able to go out, get capital, and you have enough funds to be able to focus entirely on your new business, that is lovely. I was not in that position. I already had two kids, and so I worked hard and worked smart. I worked myself into the ground but was very deliberate about how I used my time. That is important to think about. The vision is probably most important, and then putting together a plan to get there and chipping away at it every day.
You said something important, which applies to a lot of things, which is having a vision but then willing to readjust it or to adjust it as new data comes in or new circumstances arrive. Things might need to be adjusted, at least in terms of how you get to where you are getting or even whether there is another way to accomplish what you want to accomplish.
I think that we don’t value people changing their minds. We see that as a weakness, and it is not. The ability to bring in information, filter it and adjust course is what makes us human and what often makes companies most successful. I encourage people that it is okay to change your mind. It is okay to move in a different direction. It is positive to bring information, filter it, and decide what the next best step for you. It is something that allows us to grow and, hopefully, our businesses to grow as well.
I have a publishing company that is separate from not in legal at all. It was something that I felt called to do. I thought it would be positive for women and girls. In that process, I learned what you are talking about in terms of iteration of the company needs to be responsive to the customer base, too. If the customers are telling you things, you have to take that into account and go, “They are looking for this. I can do it this way. I hadn’t thought of that but I will bet this would be helpful to them.” Listening to them is how you come up with the innovations, iterations, and things.
The biggest habit I had to break was creating solutions in the vacuum of a lawyer’s mind because we don’t even realize it but so often, all of us, women included, are creating strategies and solutions based on what we think is best for our client instead of listening to them, doing our research, and iterating as we go. Another big tip in the spirit of this theme that I would give readers is to bring someone on as a partner, employee or founder but somebody on who is not a lawyer.
We need to get out of the legal mind. We need to look at things from a lot of different perspectives, and I know that our team brings out the best in me as a lawyer but also is good at telling me like, “You are thinking about this too much from a lawyer’s perspective or that happens in 0.0008% of the circumstances. It is not worth spending all your time and energy on.”
That experience for me was listening to people and figuring out how you could create something new that would respond to what they wanted to do. It translates to other things. Everything we do, we learn. I learned that and thought, “You’ve got to employ that same listening in your legal practice because obviously, this was helpful. It created a whole new thing that you never saw.”
Maybe you’ve got to make sure you are doing that as a lawyer as well with your clients, and you are thinking outside the box in terms of what can help them. My publishing company is like a series of gift books compiled of some of the notes that my mom sent me during my career inspiration for me every day. We put them into gift books saying, “If you don’t have a mom who sends that to you every day, you can have these books.”
What I learned from people was that they read the books together with their kids, and they wrote out some of the notes from the books themselves into lunchboxes for their kids. Many of them want to do the same thing but they want it to be pretty, and they are not very good at drawing or whatnot. I was like, “I will create a self-guided journal so that they can create a personalized book for their child using some of the same graphics and nicely put together book. It would be something that they created instead of copying from ours.”
I love it so much. I want it. You have to shoot me a link afterward, and I will shout it from the rooftop. That is genius.
There’s nothing better in the world than having people a diverse team that brings in different experiences and perspectives.
If I had to listen to them like, “How are you using this? What are you doing?” I’ve got to ask them questions. I hadn’t thought about it like, “How can I create this thing for them that they are basically asking for?” Here we go. Never ever would have created that journal at all. I learned from that venture so many different things, also trusting your gut. That is the other thing.
It is so underrated but it is everything.
I was going to ask you when you said having a founder, co-founder or somebody else on the executive team that has a different perspective than you do. That is important.
It makes for hard conversations, so you have to be prepared for that. I certainly was not. I was always a people pleaser. I was always uncomfortable with confrontation. I have had to do a lot of self-growth but I have found that there is nothing better in the world than having a diverse team that brings in different experiences and perspectives.
That is usually what I have seen as the combo of co-founders in legal tech. Maybe a tech focus, lawyer, and maybe somebody else with a different focus, and you can put that lens on the different things that you are doing. You raised something interesting too in terms of it sounds good to have that, “I like to hear new ideas, and we like to debate things,” but it can be challenging to do that, and you have to be ready for that.
I’m one of those people that love to learn more and grow. I like challenging myself. That is how I do a better job but you can’t do it all at once. I would not be able to have an executive team like this if I was still practicing law every single day. That would have been too hard but it is the place that I am now where I get to switch gears and focus on growing this company.
This has been enlightening. I appreciate you describing your journey and your company’s journey. It will be interesting to see where you go next and how you keep improving and expanding on your vision as well. It is a small world. Maya Markovich is very involved in your advocacy group. I interviewed her on another show, so I have met her through that. She is a very dynamic person.
She is extraordinary. She is the Executive Director of the Justice Technology Association.
We interviewed her after she had left the law firm. She was out before she had started that position. To close up, I usually ask a few lightning-round questions. I’m going to go through a few of those with you. The first question would be, what talent do you wish you had but you don’t?
I wish I was a better project planner. I struggle with the nuance. I like the high level, and it is very difficult when that is not how your brain works.
You can keep growing and expanding in that area or you can have others. You do that well. There are a couple of options. Sometimes growing is good but you have to grow in everything. Have some other people do some of that. Outsource that within the team. What trait do you most deplore in yourself and others?
In myself, it would be when I get to be so much of a people pleaser that I lose boundaries or my truth, and I don’t communicate effectively, so I’m not managing my own expectations and that of others. It is not fair, and that would be something that I deplore in others, too. It is courageous to share your truth and to be honest about how you feel. I think delivery matters but we have to stop trying to control people’s responses. We don’t get to know how they respond, instead, we have to focus on ourselves and how we walk through the world.
That is true. It can be hard to do at times but also there is a difference between reacting and responding to others. That is the thing I work on, reacting without thinking or having a meaningful response, which means you are taking yourself out of it for a minute and then re-engaging.
That reactive piece I don’t like either and judgment when people’s first reaction is to judge someone or something. It is hard for me to get my head around it. I hate it.
That can be a challenge. It is nice if people would be open-minded about a lot of things but it can be hard. It is hard for some people and lawyers, who tend to be more decisive about things or can also be a judgment aspect to that. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
My health and my family. I’m sure most people say that but I have got two daughters. I’m married. We separated for a long time but have pulled it back together, and I’m very grateful for that.
Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite as a dinner guest?
This person is dead but I would have loved to have met with Golda Meir, the former Israeli Prime Minister. She was known to negotiate big deals in her kitchen while cooking a meal, which I don’t cook but I would have loved to have a conversation with her. There is no question about it.
Truth is the highest form of self-care.
She is legendary in that regard. I did not know about the cooking part but legendary in the negotiating part. What is your motto, if you have one?
“Truth is the highest form of self-care.” What I mean by that is it goes along with the theme earlier, and this is clearly an issue that I struggle with that is why I have to live by it. We spend so much of our time worrying about how other people will react that we oftentimes bury our truth, and it comes up all the time. We stay in relationships longer than sometimes we necessarily should because we are worried about how the other person will react or respond.
We don’t talk to people for a long time that we know and love because we are worried about how a decision that we have made or something we have to say to them is going to affect them. We don’t leave a job because we are worried about what the ramifications will be when we leave. I’m not talking about situations where you might not be safe. That is different but in general, once we are able to speak it, 99% of the time, it is never as bad as we played it out in our head. We can take a sigh of relief, drop our shoulders, and move forward. I remind myself of that all the time when I’m afraid to say or do something that our truth is the highest form of taking care of ourselves or our wellness.
That does come full circle from the beginning of our discussion. I appreciate you sharing your personal journey and professional journey on the show and introducing people to some of your innovations that people may not have realized what you are working on and where it might go.
Thank you so much. This has been lovely. It has been a wonderful conversation. I’m so grateful for this opportunity and your time.
Thanks, Erin.