Win the Talent, Win the Game: The Fractional Revolution with Brett Colvin

Welcome to Studying Law Around the World. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. We talk about the hard parts, the surprises, and the decisions that shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast is for you. Some hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Studying Law around the World. Today I'll be interviewing Brad Cohen, who is the CEO and founder of Good Lawyer, an incredible company that is very much changing the landscape of what a fractional in-house counsel looks like in Canada, a very innovative endeavor. And I wanted to ask you to start up our podcast today. Brad, if you could introduce yourself to your listeners and and share a little bit about your background. For sure, man. Well, I think you did a pretty good job just to fill in a few gaps. So my name is Brick Calvin and I'm one of the cofounders and the CEO of Good Lawyer. Good Layer is really a platform, a townhouse to attract in-house lawyers who are looking for more flexibility or a little more entrepreneurial lean in in the practices that they're building. And Good Lawyer has evolved a lot over the years. I started my career BLG, spent 4 1/2 years there, you know, for a period thought I would be there for a long time, but ultimately my entrepreneurial spirit and I was always kind of was Mr. Ideas Guy, which was not a compliment. Ultimately bumped into to too many walls and I I just was a little bit exasperated and and finally sort of convinced that if I wanted to affect change in this industry that, you know, I've been a part of and, you know, was going to spend my career in, I wasn't gonna be able to do it from the inside. So that's really why sparked sort of the the desire to build. Good Lord, I've always been a little munchkin. Would be. Is that a little kid good where you know, for me has been a platform to express many of the ideas and the frustration and the first thing where and probably we've got a treatment sunroom talented people onto our team that have really contributed to shaping, you know, getting a good lawyer to where it is today. So yeah, that's me. That's awesome. I read a little bit about the story of good lawyer and, and if I'm recalling it correctly, that comes really from a conversation you had in the beginning of your law school experience. So I'd love to hear a little bit about that. And and then also even, you know, looking back, how did that conversation really shaped this vision for your career? Because you're finished up law school and then worked at a law firm for a while. So that was kind of in the back burner for a long time. Where? How did that go? Yeah, so I mean, I think you're talking about the the story about Mel and Moe was an immigrant entrepreneur coffee shop near the law school. And I want to see UA for for business and law. And so I got to know Moe a little bit during Business School. He was probably my go to coffee shop and then go back for law bumped into him again. He remembered me, and you're just having this, like, jovial conversation. And then he asked me what was I doing in the building? I said, oh, I'm in law school now, and I was one. Moe went from really friendly to a bit more serious. And I just remember him looking at me and like pointing at me and saying be a good lawyer, be a good lawyer. He really held on that be a good lawyer piece and I don't know it it just it hit me like a ton of bricks. And there was something about that that phrasing, that good lawyer. And, you know, he wasn't just talking about being a smart, you know, competent practitioner. He was there. There was something deeper sort of embedded in that. And you know, really, I think from my experience, you know, in law school, in the firm and then, you know, these last 5-6 years building good lawyer, 99% of the lawyers I meet are, are really good people. They want to make a positive difference in the world. They want to support their families, they want to support their colleagues. But the system that, you know, we're trained to come up in and you know, one of the most famous lawyer lines is whenever I see, you know, why did we do it this way? It was, you know, always sort of the response I always got was, you know, because it's always been done this way and that never really said so well. So I think, you know, the way that I saw where my career could have gone and stayed in the big firm, I just couldn't look myself in the face and like sort of see that trajectory to see the the partners who I respected but didn't want that same career path of that same life that I saw them living. And I mean, frankly, I can't always been a bit of a crazy entrepreneur. And so for me just being sort of stuff old in terms of my creativity, trying new things or challenging the status quo was was not the environment to do it in. You know, again, that sort of kicked off the good lawyer journey, but what good lawyer has become today, if I'm being completely honest, you know, back in first year law when I was talking to Moe, I could not have pictured. I just knew that I was going to start a business one day. Good Lawyers felt special when most said it. And, you know, it wasn't until years later, after the firm and even into the good lawyer journey where, you know, we really narrowed in and realized that there was this big gap for businesses, you know, who have complex legal needs. You know, the two traditional things for those corporate lawyers were a big law generally in the in-house route. And it just was so clear that there was something missing in the middle. And so we've been focused on trying to build and we keep learning and keep iterating every day. Except it has been good. And I'm excited for what the future holds. That's amazing, that's amazing. It's been it's been fun to watch it from like far away. No way. Something that I've noticed and and that I'm trying to kind of understand more and more as as I speak to all their lawyers. I feel like one of the things that I'm noticing is that many times the motto is really like accommodating for people who are very close to retiring. But then is is very hard for those kind of coming into the pipeline. And then maybe a lot of these models are still kind of following that, catering to that public. But specifically about your business model, I'm trying to understand here, you know, what, what problem were you and, and are you solving for both the lawyers and the clients in this, in this style of, of doing business? And you know, I think me and, and some of my listeners might not have, you know, the, the picture of what, what the industry looks like right now. So if you don't mind kind of sharing with us quickly, what does the like traditional secondment or staffing model looks right now looks like and and then versus what good lawyers is doing? Yeah, I'm happy to kind of fill in some of those blanks, right. So maybe for starters, good lawyers focused on business law, you know, we're not doing family criminal like we, we have a lane and or something that lane aligns with even, you know, things I'm testing, which is business. And so we we stay very strictly in that business lane. And then when it comes to like the company that we're supporting, it's pretty simple. You know, for these larger mid market or enterprise organizations, they have a tremendous amount of legal needs. And you know, if you rewind the clock far enough, all of those legal needs were serviced by external traditional law firms at some point. You know, don't pin me to a date, but 20-30 years ago there was this realization that, you know, sending all the work outside of the business was A expensive and B, and perhaps B is the at least as important disconnected. There was always somebody in the business who was forced to quarterback those legal needs. And as organizations got more complex, you know, market capital cap companies got bigger and bigger, those legal needs got more complex. That continued to compound and eventually they started building that legal muscle in house. They knew that there would still be work that they needed to send externally. But more and more, and if you look at this, the sort of growth of in-house legal teams over the last 20 years, like, it's incredible. Like in-house legal teams have gotten bigger and bigger every year as the organization, the company brings more and more of that legal muscle inside. The business of the Post is sending it out to external law firms and that's, you know, a trend that is crystal clear and, and from my perspective of the entrepreneur, makes a ton of sense because you want to solve legal problems, legal issues, take advantage of legal opportunities as close to the metal of the business as possible. And so it makes a lot of sense that these in-house legal teams more connected, more cost effective, continue to grow and where good lawyer comes in. And again, I'm focusing on the business. I'll come back to the lawyers. We're good lawyer comes in for a business is splitting the middle between the pros and cons of hiring another full time employee, another in-house lawyer onto your team or perhaps your first in-house lawyer onto your team and sending work externally to law firms. And so you know where you need an FTE as opposed to where you would like to send workout to a law firm. Like that's a big gap. And good lawyer is, you know, we're just obsessed with trying to fill that in between space as well as we can. And that's where this whole concept of fractional in-house counsel or fractional GC for those mid caps really came to bear and and has been the launchpad for the business we're building now on the talent side. And maybe just to wrap up there, it's way more cost and Googlers way more cost effective than sending work externally dramatically. And it's faster and simpler for a GC inside, you know, a Fortune 500 to augment their existing in-house legal team with some specialization for maybe you know, internal portfolio. That could be, you know, fintech regulation that could be supporting the partnerships revenue team. So there's there's a million ways that you can find the right talent, plug them in in a cost effective way without the burden of having to find another full time time resource into the business. The side that I actually I think is the most interesting though is the, you know, the lawyer side of the equation within good layer. And there's been a huge move to fractional across many service industries, professional services. You know, we've been seeing the fractional CFO guys for a long time and you know, you can pretty much hire any fractional C-Suite you want. And that's all well and good, but I actually think that the fractional model works better for law than any other level. And the reason being is law is so technical and the alternatives so often are to outsource that legal issue, that legal need to an external firm who's, you know, totally disconnected from being close to that metal in the business. That it lends itself quite nicely to a specialist coming in and supporting in a way that the current existing sort of internal structure of that organization, whether it's a big in-house legal team, whether it's the CFO playing lawyer in a way that is dramatically more streamlined than sending work to the firm. And as I noted, sort of less burdensome than trying to figure out and asks about expertise full time in the business. And this trend that we've been seeing in fractional finally started to catch on with lawyers. I don't know, in the last like 2-3 years, certainly in Canada, it's been very recent and think good lawyer played a fairly significant role in helping promote the whole idea. You know, I didn't make up fractional GC, but I do think we distributed that idea across Canada in a way that we hadn't seen previously. And the reason, and that's the other thing that I notice a lot is sometimes there's and and it's less and less every day, but there's this perception that lawyers working in this fractional flexible legal space doing it because they couldn't do anything else. They couldn't get in the big firm, they couldn't rise at the race in the House legal team. And I could assure you that is absolutely not the case. We are constantly having, you know, the businesses that we work with trying to convert the fractional lawyers full time. And if that's what the lawyer wants and that's what the business wants, that's what we want. You know, we're here to facilitate that relationship. But these lawyers that are truly thriving in this fractional world, it is the most desirable way for them to practice. They don't want to do anything else because what it does is it puts them in control and you know, now they get to practice in a way that fits into their life. It gives them tremendous flexibility. You know, we've got the former GC of Cadbury 2 fractionals half time she go get GC jobs all over the place. She chooses not to because she's at a stage in her career where, you know, she wants to work halftime. She still wants to work on sophisticated work and with really impressive, you know, businesses organization, but she doesn't want to do it full time. She's already gone through that a couple of times in her career and like she's over that. It was a great experience, but she doesn't want to do that right now. She wants to, you know, sailor boat and enjoy life a little bit more. On the flip end, we have layers that are, and this is probably the most common segment in the Goodyear network that kind of like 8 to 15 year call spent, you know, their first 3-4 years like I did in big law and then probably 2/3 of that time working in house in an industry they're passionate about. And for these folks, again, flexibility can be really critical, you know, raising a family, taking care of like elderly parents, whatever, wanting to travel the world. There's a lot of reasons why folks in the prime of their career want that flexibility. But then we also have other folks that love in house work, don't want to be chasing a billable target all year, don't want the burden of having to build a book and become partner and do that whole thing. But they do want to Max their income and they, you know, are itching to fill their plate up sort of maximum because that's the other thing, you know, it takes a bit more time to stack fractionals if you're, you know, a good lawyer in the network. But once you do, you're making a higher unit rate than you would if you had a full time job. So, you know, we've got good lawyers work in like the GC I mentioned, working a couple days a week, making north of 200. And then we've got other lawyers, prime time of their career. They're here to like, you know, build as much as they can, close to half $1,000,000. And so there is this like spectrum of opportunities for lawyers, but it really does come down to sort of the starting point, which is I either want flexibility or I want something a little more entrepreneurial than I'm getting in any of these full time roles. That's a long way to answer, but there you go. Oh, that's, that's amazing. I really appreciate you going into the details and it makes so much sense of why both business and a lawyer could really want to work in this model and and going a little drilling on the on the talent side of it. Since you mentioned it so much. I'm, I'm not sure if this is your motto or good lawyers Moto, but something along the lines of wind the talent win the game. So I'd love to hear a little more about, you know, how do you find that and retain that that top legal talent and especially at the same time, what makes good lawyer be the choice for those lawyers today? You just mentioned a lot about, you know, the flexibility, the possibility of flexibility both in the income and the working hours, but I'd love to hear a little more on that. So I mean, I think one of the things that, you know, probably the reason I'm on the podcast today that we've done well is we've built a brand and, you know, we've built this growing community, especially in Canada of lawyers who, you know, maybe aren't the the crazy entrepreneur like I am that, you know, wanted to live in grandma's basement for a couple of years to get good lawyer off the ground. But they do feel that something is not quite working for them in the traditional models, whether that's, you know, often, you know, that's from their time working in big law, but could also be from, you know, going as far as they want to go in a full time role in house. And because we've built this brand and I think, you know, we keep on refining and hopefully doing a better job at, you know, telling our story and mission and and what we're all about, you know, to the world, especially if that segment of the world's on LinkedIn where we do most of our talking or storytelling. But because we've built that brand, there's been no period in the history of Good Lawyer where we haven't been able to find talent. Yeah. We, we haven't been very fortunately and and somewhat haphazardly become a magnet for folks that resonate with. I think just the general idea that there should be something else that the, the traditional paths are great for a lot, a lot of lawyers, but not all lawyers. And there's too many that feel stuck in one of those traditional paths and, you know, way too many who just opt out of the profession entirely. And so I think because we've, you know, created space for this highly attractive alternative lawyers, you know, are applying to be in the good lawyer network everyday, like almost there. There's almost never a day that goes by where we don't have a lawyer apply to be in the network. And what's that? What that has driven internally a good lawyer because 1/4 of my in-house team is product in depth. And so that inbound interest and then just that sheer sort of growing number of lawyers that we vetted to be in the community and therefore like in our database and they're available for opportunities has pushed us to build tools. And all the advancements in AI recently have made those tools a hell of a lot more powerful to help us find that needle in the haystack that is perfect for the mandate that just came in, that opportunity that just came in and connect those dots with a tiny team relative to the number of professionals that we're supporting him. And I think another good sort of number to throw out there is like when I think back to my my big firm days, there was probably 1 1/2, maybe even 2 sort of not when I don't like this term, but the non more sort of support staff, whether that's assistance paralegals, marketing folks like other bodies inside the firm, supporting the revenue generators, which are all lawyers. There's no revenue generators inside of a firm that aren't billing hours. And you know that ratio of let you know, let's just call it 1 1/2 to every lawyer in our model. You know, we've got over 400 lawyers now and 16 full-time people on the team. I think we're just about to hire, you know, four more bodies onto the team, maybe a fifth in the next couple weeks here, which when you're a 16 person full Time Team is a lot of growth. But our ability to service over 400 lawyers with such a skeleton crew? Is a function of the tools that we've built, the processes, I mean the business model generally, but I kind of lost my train of thought there, but hopefully that answers your question. No, absolutely does it absolutely does. And I guess I didn't discuss this extensively with you, but who I'm speaking to here in the podcast, most of my listeners nowadays are early career professionals, people who are looking into what a career could look like and all of that. And, and, and knowing that, you know, you navigated a big law, you launched good lawyer, very like business oriented and all of that. I I'd love to hear, you know, if if you look back, is there some kind of piece of advice you issued have been given, you know, right at the start of your career or, or after leaving all of these, you know, is there something that you would tell to younger lawyers now that are, you know, oftentimes looking around and seeing maybe not as many opportunities or, or maybe seeing a system that by some can be described as broken or, or one that will lead to, you know, not as great of outcomes? Yeah, for sure. Um, so for all those, you know, sued to be or brand new lawyers listening like Elon, I'm not going to give you a date, but I can't guarantee that there will be, you know, a good layer apprentice, a good lawyer articling program at some point in the future because it's so obvious. And you know, where law started it in a way where, you know, me and the team are trying to take it back to. And yeah, I'm just going to give you like a unrequested quick history lesson. But when you know lawyers started working with businesses, you know, 100 years ago, a lawyer and you know the CEO or whoever was writing the business would have a conversation at the beginning of the year. They would agree on the help. They would get paid in 12 monthly installments just like a fractional lawyer does today. And you know, you get this much of my time that lawyer would have a few businesses that he was supporting or she was supporting. It was off to the races. There was no tracking of time whatsoever. It was really morning. I trusted agreement and overtime it was actually clients that drove to the creatinine of that tracking time. Maybe maybe lawyers took it to the point ones that we we know and don't love today. But to me, this is really kind of like a full circle on where law started, which is, you know, you get to know a few clients intimately. You become an extension of their business and you're able to, you know, stay sane, not track a billable rate. And also, you know, provide your expertise in in a way that, you know, really moves the needles for the organizations that you're supporting. And I tell this story because there's a lot of doom and gloom, especially with all of the Richard Suskin, you know, the end of lawyers. That was a book that I read back in law school. I don't buy it, betting my business on the world needing lawyers being way too far away for me to care for in a world where you don't need smart, compassionate, purposeful lawyers, then we're we're living in a crazy world and we're all on, you know, universal basic income or something. But I think from my perspective, there has never been a better time to practice law and become a lawyer. And maybe the final kind of little anecdotal share on on this point is it was my first day of law school. It was even before I met Mo and came up with the name Good lawyer was my first day. It was foundations class. And I'll never forget this professor, Professor Decost, rest in peace. He's gone now. But he said, you know, we're in the middle of class. We're all excited. It's first day of law school and he just like slammed his book down and I think it might have been the first thing he said. The 3D's of being a lawyer, duty, deadlines and drudgery duty I was OK with. I don't mind taking on responsibility. You know, building a business like good Lawyer requires a lot of duty deadlines. Like any good lawyer, I'm highly motivated by deadlines and can, you know, work work to a deadline. So like that one was OK too. But the drudgery, that one gave me pause. You know, I don't think that there are a lot of folks because, you know, to get into law school to go the whole 9 yards, you know, you, you got to be a smart, driven individual. And I just don't believe in, certainly from my experience, haven't seen a lot of those folks that want to be a good lawyer, want to be a lawyer that, you know, have an impact that they were expecting a ton of drudgery and dock review. And, you know, just like all of the things that I did as a especially early associate that just didn't feel like they were adding value. I knew I was clocking time. I knew that time was getting billed out to, you know, massive enterprises that you know aren't blinking over, you know, a fifty $100,000 bill, but I knew that I would never pay. You know, I think when I left those, the 4th year associate 500 and something an hour like to watch the photocopier go to go through, you know, a million images on a dock review or you know, go through the same agreement 400 times for a huge transaction, changing names that I knew could be automated. And I think this wave of AI is really pushing, pushing the envelope on the billable hour model, certainly client expectations and where I think it all leads because there's also so much unmet legal need inside. You know, I'm not even talking to the access to justice crisis that, you know, I think most people picture when they, when they hear that, which is, you know, folks that can't access legal at all for like basic things like getting divorced or, you know, getting in trouble or, or whatever it is. There's so much unmet legal need, which equates to legal risk or missed opportunities inside of businesses. And you know, if we can Fast forward, I mean, it's already happening, the transitions moving quite quickly. But if we Fast forward 5-10 years and, you know, articling students like yourself don't ever have to do a dock review again, junior associates don't have to, you know, find the template from the right partner and then, like, massage it and pray that they can just, you know, use tools to strip away the drudgery and get to focus their energies on, you know, the funnest and most frankly, like, human parts of being a lawyer. I think that's a profession that retains way more people. And you know, if you think about doctors, you don't have a massive, I mean, some doctors leave the profession certainly, but you don't have a massive exodus of doctors from practicing the profession that they trained in, in law. You do it's, it's insane how many lawyers opt out of out of being lawyers after five years, 10 years in the profession because this is not the life they want to live. And I attribute a lot of that to the business models and the obsession around targets and billables. But I also attribute that tremendously to the drudgery that doesn't make the practitioner, the professional feel important, feel valued, feel like they're driving, you know, something positive in a, in a real way that isn't just, you know, being attention to detail and meticulous. So if I was coming up and I was coming in law school, despite all of the the talk and all the hoohah about, you know, what the future of the profession looks like, I would be feeling very bullish and excited. And I would be, you know, really starting to play with the tools for sure, but also starting to think about what are, like, the unique human things that lawyers do that I need to get better at. And, you know, I think you're a great example, my friend. Starting a podcast, having these conversations is going to serve you so well as you continue to build your career. And yeah, I had to sort of summarize it on one point. I'd say the future of law is bright. And check us out goodlawyer.ca, my friend. Really appreciate you making the time to be in the podcast today. Brett, thank you so much for all of you listening to today's episode as well, and we'll see you on the next one. Not going my friend. Cheers.