About Lawyerist (2018)

Our Team

: Aaron Street
Co-Founder & CEO

: sam@lawyerist.com

: Stephanie Everett
Community Director

: Marshall Lichty
Editor in Chief

: Ashley Steckler
Operations Director

: Ashley Fisher-Nelson
Ad Sales Director

: Katie Ryder
Ad Manager

: Ayesha Schroeder
Conversion Director

: Lindsey Calhoon
Production Coordinator

: Aretha Soderstrom
Staff Writer & Content Creator

: Paul Fischer
Podcast Editor

: Cari Twitchell
Writer/Editor

Our Contributors

Our Values

Build the tribe.
Improve the ecosystem.
Deliver value first; seek profit second.
Learn and teach.
Think inclusively.
Do great work that supports a great life.

Our Business

Lawyerist’s core focus is to build the tribe of small-firm lawyers who are building sustainable law practices for the next 20 years and beyond. Firms in the Lawyerist tribe are built around client-centric services, future-oriented technology, profit-oriented business models, and—like us—have access to justice and inclusion among their core values. We have invested $37,397 in access to justice and inclusion initiatives since 2016, and we are on track to double that by March 2019.

What We Offer

Here is an overview of what we offer:

Learn

The Lawyerist Podcast

The Lawyerist Podcast features successful lawyers and other creatives helping to shape the future of law practice. It is free, of course. Some of the most popular episodes include:

You can also check this list. We guarantee you’ll find something to help you improve your business (and, probably, your life).

Lawyerist.com

Lawyerist’s website has thousands of posts, pages, resources, reviews, downloads, and comments that will help you build your future-focused law firm. Here are some of the more popular:

The Small Firm Scorecard

The Small Firm Scorecard (and its analog, the Solo Practice Scorecard) are guided self-assessment tools we designed to help small firms and solo lawyers check their strengths and weaknesses and explore goals, strategy, systems, marketing, client service model, finances, and people and staffing. For example:

Do you know specifically what you want to get out of your firm, including how much money you want to take home, how many hours you want to work (including vacations), the kind of work you want to be doing, and the impact (if any) you want your work to have in the world?
Do you use a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor your firm’s health and help predict future success?
Do understand your ideal client’s “buyer’s journey” based on actual interviews with real clients and potential clients?
And many more…

Join

Lawyerist Insider (Free)

Our free Lawyerist Insider subscription deepens your relationship with the tribe. You’ll join a large—and growing—cohort of similarly different-minded lawyers trying to find better ways to solve legal problems for clients. Your free subscription gives you:

Access to the always-growing Lawyerist Insider Library and its menagerie of charts, templates, worksheets, and checklists;
Our weekly Lawyerist Insiders-only email newsletter; and
Access to our super-useful and active private Facebook group.

Lawyerist Insider Plus

Lawyerist Insider Plus gives you another level of access to our paid content. You get everything you see above, plus:

In-depth “survival guides” on website design, starting a WordPress blog, setting up your new computer, and computer security upgrades.
An ever-growing list of our other premium guides, tools, and templates.

You could buy all of our paid content piecemeal, but you get them all at a discount and instantaneously for just $29.99/year with a Lawyerist Insider Plus subscription. Your subscription’s value only grows as we (continually) add new content to the library. This is the first thing you pay for with us. We think you’ll find it is worth it.

Grow

Lawyerist Lab

Lawyerist Lab is our flagship. It is unquestionably our most valuable—and ambitious—offering. It is a year-long program with guided daily projects, intimate and hand-picked mastermind groups, video and audio training, a vibrant Slack community, monthly group coaching calls, and other tools designed to help you build the law business you have always envisioned.

Building from the Small Firm Scorecard’s core concepts, Lab’s year-long guided accountability journey dives into your goals, strategy, client acquisition, client-centered services, personal productivity, technology, innovation, systems & procedures, finances, and people & staffing.

What’s included?

Content. You will get content (video and written) each week focused on one of the fundamental areas of practice management.
Implementation tools. Daily worksheets and templates guide you through steps to create and implement strategies in each of the core practice management areas.
Accountability & support. Lab team members and other community members will hold you accountable, provide feedback, and answer questions in a private online discussion group.
Understanding. Do you need to take a week off for trial? We get it. We’ve been there. We’ll be here to pick you up on the other side.
Mastermind calls. You will be grouped into carefully-curated small groups (based on firm size, age, etc.) and meet for facilitated monthly mastermind calls.
Private community. You’ll be front and center in our closed community platform (#LawyeristLabSlack) where your drive and ideas take flight while your tribe flies alongside.
Expert workshops. Approximately once a month, you will hear from leading experts in the practice management core competencies and interact with them through online workshops.
Lawyerist LabCon. You’ll get an invitation to this amazing in-person event modeled on the ever-popular TBD Law (price of the conference to be paid separately).

You can learn more about Lab here.

Lawyerist LabCon (f/k/a TBD Law)

LabCon is Lawyerist’s capstone event for Lawyerist Lab participants and select other members of the Lawyerist community. At this live, in-person conference, you’ll join a crew of ahead-of-the-curve lawyers to reimagine the practice of law, rethink how lawyers and their clients work together, and retool your law firm business models for the next decade.

LabCon is not open to everyone and it is not a CLE. This invite-only event is capped at 75 attendees so everyone’s voice can be heard and so we can emphasize our community’s inherent diversity by curating who is in the room. Innovative lawyers come in all genders, colors, sexual orientations, and abilities.
LabCon is a unique mix of conference, summit, retreat, design-thinking workshop, and hackathon. You won’t hear the speakers you typically find on a conference agenda. LabCon features scintillating facilitated and interactive conversations, workshops, and activities.
LabCon is an all-inclusive event. The event fee covers registration, meals, activities, and lodging. Just get yourself to Minneapolis.
We promise enough coffee, food, and drinks to fuel two-and-a-half days of intense conversations and mind-blowing practice hacking. You’ll leave with at least one book to inspire you, a community of innovators to help you reach your goals, a bucket-list tour, and a whole new perspective on the practice of law.

Lab Pro

Lab Pro is an ongoing, evergreen community for lawyers particularly interested in innovating and taking their firms to the next level. They have probably been to LabCon (f/k/a TBD Law) or scored well on the Scorecard. And they want to stay connected to, supported by, and challenged by the Lawyerist community in an ongoing way. Lab Pro offers:

a private and vibrant online discussion forum;
monthly facilitated mastermind calls with your carefully-curated small cohort of helpful collaborators;
interactive online workshops with leading experts in business, technology, and law practice management;
the accountability and support that helped you fall in love with Lab don’t have to end when your Lab year does. Our alumni diaspora, together in perpetuity in Lab Pro, will still hold you accountable, will still provide invaluable feedback, and will still answer questions in our private online discussion group; and
an evergreen invitation to attend LabCon.

Lab Pro is an investment of $99/month.

Our Story

Lawyerist started out in 2007 as a blog called SoloSmallTech, born of Sam’s search for better tech tools for law practice. As a small community started to come together in the comments, it became a great place for solo and small-firm lawyers to find innovative ideas.

After a little while, Sam renamed the publication to Lawyerist and started inviting other writers, starting with Eric Cooperstein, to help cover other law practice subjects. Not long after that, in March 2009, Aaron Street joined Lawyerist to turn Sam’s promising little website into a company, with the goal of fostering a community of innovative solo and small-firm lawyers. The site grew quickly, and so has the community along with it.

Join Your Tribe

The innovative and entrepreneurial small-firm lawyers in the Lawyerist community are not like-minded, exactly. Call us similarly different-minded lawyers who are trying to figure out a better way to solve legal problems for clients.

Now you can join that community by joining the Lawyerist Insider. Perks include access to our Insider Library, our weekly Insiders-only email newsletter, and small-firm lawyers can join our private Facebook group for Insiders.

About Lawyerist