"An experiential and intense weekend for lawyers and law students who want to deliver legal services or start a business in the legal industry"
Upcoming Events!
Lawyers, consultants, business folks and techies everywhere team up to meet in person as well as partake in virtual international activities with other teams to work on existing or new legal business ideas. You may participate anywhere in the world, or beyond (so long as you have a signal!)
If interested in participating, RSVP HERE.
The Problem
1. Many law school graduates will either not be employed upon graduation, or they will not be employed in jobs they want. There simply are not enough good jobs. Most of those that are employed will be underpaid, overworked, or dislike what they’re doing, and who they’re doing it for.
2. But there is still a huge unmet demand for legal work in the commercial and consumer markets.
3. Most law students have little knowledge or imagination about how working for smaller firms or going solo can be more rewarding financially - and in lifestyle! Today smaller firms are paying better, and the talent is as high, and in some cases higher than the elite large firms. The most financially rewarding structures for a law practice are small 2-3 partner firms with a large staff, which is common to successful immigration lawyers. These lawyers earn more than most elite firm partners. And unlike large firms, you can’t be DE-EQUITIZED if you own the firm!
4. Most lawyers starting their own practices in solo or small firms don’t fail as businesses because the lawyers are not experienced enough, most fail because they could not generate enough clients to pay them enough money.
5. Most lawyers have no formal process for searching for what client’s needs are, and for finding a business model that works in their market.
6. Most lawyers instead draft a business plan and start executing on it, including investing in leases and staff, when they don’t even know if they have a business model that works. The reason most lawyers think they have a business model is because most lawyers erroneously think that their business model’s success is mostly dependent upon their skills as a lawyer.
7. Most start-up firms and businesses want to duplicate what the larger established firms or enterprises have done without thinking why or how it is even applicable to their start up. I spent most of 2012 meeting and learning from the top minds in the business of law from the USA and Europe. I met with them in Madrid, London and Washington DC. I also met with former managing partners of large global firms. I found them all to be exceptionally bright, experienced, and several were pioneers in their own time at their elite firms. However, they are or were experts in managing large established enterprises, not start-ups! One MP even told me that managing a global firm before 2007 could have been done by anyone of average business intelligence as the firms were growing exponentially from market demand.
8. In the past, education about starting a business was mostly based upon execution. Students were taught how to write a business plan and do lots of research. I did exactly that at GW’s Masters on Law Firm Management. We drafted a massive law firm strategic plan, and we researched the market for banking law in Chicago. This is a great process for large firms, which the program was designed for. But it is a useless waste of time and resources for a smaller lean start-up firms looking for clients!
9. No one created a curriculum for lawyers to accelerate the process of finding a business model because there are very few entrepreneurs in the world that understand the legal services model and the legal industry.
The Solution
An experiential and intense weekend, with minimal lectures,
designed specifically for lawyers and law students who want to deliver
legal services, or start a business in the legal industry
1. LexPreneur weekends were designed to ignite participants so they’re running as quickly as possible towards their business goals. We do this by creating an environment where they can learn quickly by doing an accelerated process to find a business model.
2. The accelerator process is called in the start-up methodology “customer development”. Without it many entrepreneurs, and lawyers, can spend large amounts of capital in months of planning, and then years of trial and error!
3. Instead of building every feature of a business model and all your services from day one, students will design a minimal viable product (MVP) and build the firm or business from there incrementally.
4. This will require determining who their customers are by talking to potential clients within time constraints of a weekend. It will also require testing viability by determining if clients will pay for the MVP. That’s a “Client Market Fit” (CMF).
5. This is probably the most radical change in how anyone is taught how to start a law practice or business in the legal industry.
The Format
1. An intensive and experiential 40 hour weekend in which participants can find and test business models in the legal industry.
2. The weekend’s format is also designed to help participants find potential partners to work with after the weekend.
3. The events are on weekends so anyone can participate, even if they’re employed, or still in law school.
4. The weekends will begin at 6:00pm on Friday, and end on Sunday at 5:00pm.
5. On Friday evening participants pitch their ideas if they want to start a team to work on their idea. Since not everyone can have their ideas tested and built, the best ideas will be chosen by other participants. Teams will then join you in building and testing ideas using the customer development process. Teams will be made up on Friday night for the rest of the weekend.
6. On Saturday teams will build and test their business models. We will show everyone how and mentors will be available to answer questions virtually or live.
7. On Sunday, teams will prepare to present their MVP to a panel of experts.
8. They will either leave with a business model to work on, or knowing how to keep testing and building a business model that can work in their market.
Contact us
To be notified of the next LexPreneur workshop for lawyers or to bring LexPreneur for students to y our law school, contact us here
1. Many law school graduates will either not be employed upon graduation, or they will not be employed in jobs they want. There simply are not enough good jobs. Most of those that are employed will be underpaid, overworked, or dislike what they’re doing, and who they’re doing it for.
2. But there is still a huge unmet demand for legal work in the commercial and consumer markets.
3. Most law students have little knowledge or imagination about how working for smaller firms or going solo can be more rewarding financially - and in lifestyle! Today smaller firms are paying better, and the talent is as high, and in some cases higher than the elite large firms. The most financially rewarding structures for a law practice are small 2-3 partner firms with a large staff, which is common to successful immigration lawyers. These lawyers earn more than most elite firm partners. And unlike large firms, you can’t be DE-EQUITIZED if you own the firm!
4. Most lawyers starting their own practices in solo or small firms don’t fail as businesses because the lawyers are not experienced enough, most fail because they could not generate enough clients to pay them enough money.
5. Most lawyers have no formal process for searching for what client’s needs are, and for finding a business model that works in their market.
6. Most lawyers instead draft a business plan and start executing on it, including investing in leases and staff, when they don’t even know if they have a business model that works. The reason most lawyers think they have a business model is because most lawyers erroneously think that their business model’s success is mostly dependent upon their skills as a lawyer.
7. Most start-up firms and businesses want to duplicate what the larger established firms or enterprises have done without thinking why or how it is even applicable to their start up. I spent most of 2012 meeting and learning from the top minds in the business of law from the USA and Europe. I met with them in Madrid, London and Washington DC. I also met with former managing partners of large global firms. I found them all to be exceptionally bright, experienced, and several were pioneers in their own time at their elite firms. However, they are or were experts in managing large established enterprises, not start-ups! One MP even told me that managing a global firm before 2007 could have been done by anyone of average business intelligence as the firms were growing exponentially from market demand.
8. In the past, education about starting a business was mostly based upon execution. Students were taught how to write a business plan and do lots of research. I did exactly that at GW’s Masters on Law Firm Management. We drafted a massive law firm strategic plan, and we researched the market for banking law in Chicago. This is a great process for large firms, which the program was designed for. But it is a useless waste of time and resources for a smaller lean start-up firms looking for clients!
9. No one created a curriculum for lawyers to accelerate the process of finding a business model because there are very few entrepreneurs in the world that understand the legal services model and the legal industry.
The Solution
An experiential and intense weekend, with minimal lectures,
designed specifically for lawyers and law students who want to deliver
legal services, or start a business in the legal industry
1. LexPreneur weekends were designed to ignite participants so they’re running as quickly as possible towards their business goals. We do this by creating an environment where they can learn quickly by doing an accelerated process to find a business model.
2. The accelerator process is called in the start-up methodology “customer development”. Without it many entrepreneurs, and lawyers, can spend large amounts of capital in months of planning, and then years of trial and error!
3. Instead of building every feature of a business model and all your services from day one, students will design a minimal viable product (MVP) and build the firm or business from there incrementally.
4. This will require determining who their customers are by talking to potential clients within time constraints of a weekend. It will also require testing viability by determining if clients will pay for the MVP. That’s a “Client Market Fit” (CMF).
5. This is probably the most radical change in how anyone is taught how to start a law practice or business in the legal industry.
The Format
1. An intensive and experiential 40 hour weekend in which participants can find and test business models in the legal industry.
2. The weekend’s format is also designed to help participants find potential partners to work with after the weekend.
3. The events are on weekends so anyone can participate, even if they’re employed, or still in law school.
4. The weekends will begin at 6:00pm on Friday, and end on Sunday at 5:00pm.
5. On Friday evening participants pitch their ideas if they want to start a team to work on their idea. Since not everyone can have their ideas tested and built, the best ideas will be chosen by other participants. Teams will then join you in building and testing ideas using the customer development process. Teams will be made up on Friday night for the rest of the weekend.
6. On Saturday teams will build and test their business models. We will show everyone how and mentors will be available to answer questions virtually or live.
7. On Sunday, teams will prepare to present their MVP to a panel of experts.
8. They will either leave with a business model to work on, or knowing how to keep testing and building a business model that can work in their market.
Contact us
To be notified of the next LexPreneur workshop for lawyers or to bring LexPreneur for students to y our law school, contact us here
