What I learned from 1-year full time in my own law firm

High and lows from a year of learning

It was a crisp October morning in 2021 when I entered my co-working space for the first time as a self-employed business owner.

Sure, I had been ‘side hustling’ for a long time already. Writing blogs, speaking at conferences and then in April 2020, starting a side hobby law firm.

But there was always the safety net of the corporate job… the reassuring security of regular pay coming into my account. And sick leave! I had a tonne of it saved up. 

Here I was, training wheels off, and having invested in my own little nook at a local coworking space, The Commons. What a delightful start and I always love visiting the various Commons offices in Melb and Sydney (excited for more to open!!)

A core value at Checklist Legal is Generous Learning - we like to learn lots, learn often, and share what we learn. I really took that to heart in year one (to the point of obsession, as you will see below!).

Oct 2021

Filming for Koshie’s business builders + innovator of the year award

On my way out the door of my corporate job, I was named Innovator of the Year by the Association of Corporate Counsel. This was such a delightful way to finish my inhouse legal career and I will forever be grateful to Schellie-Jayne Price from Chevron for nominating me.  

There was a ‘virtual’ ceremony and just a few weeks ago, the team actually sent me the award 🏆

My first day was relatively eventful because I was filming adverts and segments for Dell and Koshie’s Business Builders off the back of a competition which I had entered and won. This raised eyebrows around the office but was a nice way to start my new coworking life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ydlkfMU288

In October, I was also fortunate to join the Centre for Legal Innovation’s Value Pricing Incubator. This was filled with innovative legal professionals and as I learned more each month, I became even more certain that value-based pricing is the way to go for the future.

This program was very valuable and I am excited to share my learnings from the program soon and encourage you to apply if you have an innovative legal idea.

Nov 2021

First business planning session with Katie Bryan at Propeller.

Whilst I had started out with a good accountant, I really wanted a bit more. I had seen Katie Bryan as part of a business women’s group One Roof (also one of my fave business things) and jumped in.

Within a few weeks, she was referring me to her clients and I still really enjoy working with her and her team.

Dec 2021

Biggest quarter so far

In the last month of the calendar year, I was working with a large national law firm client for some innovative and groundbreaking work. This made me feel validated in my decision to go full-time and of course I expected clients of this size every month going forward…

Jan 2022

I certainly didn't realise how difficult it would be to get instructions during January…. Everyone was away and holidaying and relaxing. I was keen to kick off projects and close off work.

This was a big learning… get projects properly launched before January.

I had lots of projects to work on but found it hard to get instructions back from clients who were (quite rightly!) enjoying holidays and weren’t worried about contract design projects. This year, I will take a bit of down time and I will use the space to batch up a bunch of content and templates.

We had our first Melb Legal Ladies catch up!

This was a group of wonderful women that I brought together to talk about life and legal life. Building out a support network for chats and catch ups is so important and I find this group of innovative lawyers from in house, private practice and legal ops are encouraging and inspiring in equal measure.

I also started an Advanced Conscious Contracting course with the aim to become certified as a Conscious Contracting practitioner. 

Feb 2022

Engaged + Covid + pitching every week for 6 weeks

Just as clients came back to life, I went away! 

I had the wonderful Suz Chadwick Rise Retreat. I had originally booked this in early 2021 and it was postponed a few times from lockdowns. It was an excellent couple of days shared with a group of wonderful women in business. Great to connect with other women in business and I also realised that my approach to contracts and client experience could have a broader appeal than just lawyers.

Verity speaking to a group of women in art filled room

On Valentine’s Day, my clever boyfriend made his best decision yet and proposed 😉💍

However, he was feeling a bit under the weather at the time and later that week we found out he had covid… and then I got covid. Ahhh remember paid sick leave?

I was lucky and didn’t get too unwell, but the brain fog did hang around for quite some time.

Clarissa Rayward from Happy Lawyer, Happy Life is an influential figure in the integrative, forward-thinking law movement and I thought I would test out her community for a group of like-minded innovative lawyers. So I joined her group The Club and have enjoyed the new community and group connections across the country, especially helping expand my network into NSW and QLD in Australia.

The SBE Evolve program which I had applied for also kicked off in February. This program was INTENSE. It involved weekly sessions in learning a particular aspect of start-up life and then we needed to do a pitch EVERY WEEK. It was incredible how much this helped show me the importance of pitching and the different aspects of business.

Looking back, it likely was a lot to take on and I probably could have picked this one up when I had a more ‘market ready’ scalable service. 

March 2022

Licensed to Moped and named an Inspiring woman

World Commerce and Contracting is an organisation I have loved being part of for over 5 years. Since my corporate days, I have spoken at events, been to conferences, and excitedly shared their ‘Most important / Most Negotiated terms’ survey results.. So it was a real honour to be named an Inspiring Women. 

At the end of 2021, I got the idea in my head it would be fun to ride a Vespa around the city. So I booked in to get my license (a requirement in Victoria where I live) and in March I did a two-day course. I then ordered an electric scooter from women lead electric motorbike company in Sydney, Fonzarelli. Little did I know how chilly it would be riding a scooter in Melbourne winter. Can’t wait for warmer weather to really make the most of my bikie gang.

April 2022

We got B Corp certified + went conferencing

This was a long road of reading, research, assessment, and policy writing. A big thank you to the women at Really Good Consulting for help with some of the initial work to get certified.

After the first calendar quarter was quiet in 2022, I was hopeful things would pick up towards the end of the financial year to close things with a bang… 

Time to head to Tassie for my first-ever Business Chicks Conference. If you have any interest in hosting events, highly recommend you attend several Business Chicks events to get a feel for how incredible events are put together. Every detail was taken care of and we always knew where to sit and what was happening. The speakers were diverse and inspiring and the dinners and parties were delightful.

I also joined a group mentoring program within my fave women’s business group One Roof. This was a monthly check-in and accountability session with other women in business. I got to learn business wisdom from some wonderful businesses and I think One Roof did a great job on this 6 month program.

May 2022

MC-ing at Legal Innovation Tech Fest + certified in Design Thinking

Up to Sydney for the Legal Innovation and Tech Fest… IRL for the first time in a few years. I had hoped to present but ended up helping MC the General Counsel track session.

It was hard work MC-ing! Having to balance consideration for the speaker, checking how much time they have left, whether they will take questions, having some questions prepared if there aren’t any questions, and also having to stay in the one room all day. Phew! It is quite the tricky job.

I also learned a valuable lesson on being prepared. The first day I took extra time over breakfast to look over the speakers and understand the goings on. The next day, I thought I knew what was happening and this led to a false start introduction. Luckily no one was too offended (I hope!). 

My method is to prepare and that’s okay. The act of preparing is in itself the preparation, even if you don’t “use” the physical items that you prepare.

Design thinking is a big part of my legal services and I’ve always wanted to ‘sense check’ my skills against some kind of benchmark. The LUMA Institute not only has a great designing thinking program but has also built integrations with their own website explaining the various practices and developed templates in Miro and Mural for easy collaboration. 

This training was interesting and helped me understand my skill set is sitting in a good place for practicing design thinking for my legal services and I am now a certified LUMA Institute Design Thinking Practitioner.

June 2022

Studying for Commercial Law Specialist Accreditation + we didn’t hit our yearly numbers.

I was disappointed but again hopeful we could nail down some of our systems and get consistent content going and this might bring in more clients. 

Whilst it didn't bring in more clients, it did bring in clients that wanted more from us. Our average revenue per client was climbing.

The flip side of being innovative in the legal industry is that people don’t always consider you a ‘serious lawyer’. I was hoping to shake this off by applying for a Commercial Law Accredited Specialisation (basically some extra legal bits and pieces with an accreditation that says you are above average at Commercial Law.

I joined a lovely study group of other commercial lawyers and bought the textbooks and blocked out the study time. And I studied. Every. Weekend. And then I studied weeknights. Wow, there was so much to cover and I felt completely out of my depth. Find out more about what happened in the month of August…

It was also my birthday in June! I was treated to Hamilton the musical (incredible in Melbourne, and before I had seen it in New York…. Melb production was very high quality, loved it!) and also SIX! The Musical, which was such a fun event, I have never seen a musical audience so riled up.

August 2022

Tough study times and happy team times

After weeks and weeks of study, it was time for the assessments in Specialist Accreditation… Sure I had helped with multi-million dollar mergers and enterprise sales agreements, but I had never done a $350,000 small business sale before. 

The assessment process involved an exam, an interview with a hired actor, and then a 4,000 word letter of advice. There was lots of panic and tears of frustration and angst. Although we don’t find out the results until early November, I feel almost certain that I failed this time around. I did give it a good go, but the content that was covered heavily just isn’t in my day-to-day work experience. Hope that I am wrong but in any event, I definitely learned a lot and managed to grasp new respect for certain areas of the law and dedicated content creators which innovators perhaps overlook.

The clever legal team at Telstra were nominated for an innovation award at the Law Awards by Lawyers Weekly and, as I had helped kick off and develop the project, I was happy to sponsor Telstra to go to the awards.

I had a fantastic night connecting with some of my favourite legal innovators. I was reminded again of the power behind nominating people you respect for awards. It is so important and valuable, so nominate the people you respect!!

In other happy news, I welcomed my first employee! Bronwyn Smith from Promoloco joined the team part-time to help with designing our back-end systems and making our socials and other content look amazing.

This also meant I needed to create an Employment Agreement and because I am a little bit extra about contracts, I made it a visual contract with icons and diagrams.

Still, some improvements to make but stoked to have it set our team up for the visual experience we want to deliver to our clients.

September 2022

What the what? September and spring have sprung! I hosted a few different ‘Spring Fling’ days with femme founders and legal legends and generally marveled at the blossoms popping up and out everywhere.

I was also madly trying to prep and plan for a holiday I had planned for Mid September.

I was heading to Spain for a little bit of sun and then to London for a Legal Geek conference. Had a lovely time despite being a bit sick for most of the holiday. So nice to be warm and off the clock for a little bit!

October 2022

As I reflect on the year that was, I can see you are probably having the same thoughts as me… ‘Woah Verity, ease off the retreats and conferences and programs!! Get some work done!’

Yes, I hear you and I vow to cut down on my webinars and conferences and certification programs (although I am heading off to two conferences in the Gold Coast next week… Business Chicks again and Happy Lawyer Happy Life…  baby steps)

It's fun to learn but sometimes you have to trust that you know what you are doing, avoid the shiny objects, and just execute!

The Learnings

I tried to do WAY too much. Without the constraints of a formal 9 - 5 calendar time frame, I filled every waking moment with webinars and coaching and courses and certifications.

There are more things in there too but hey, this article can’t go much longer or I won’t get to next year’s exciting projects! 

See you in 12 months’ time!