A Note Celebrating EmergeCounsel’s 10th Anniversary
On EmegeCounsel’s 10th Anniversary, I wanted to thank my clients, colleagues, and mentors and reflect on where we are, how we got here, and what the future might bring.
Born Out of Failure (2014-2015)
The beginning of EmergeCounsel was not a happy time for me.
After years of litigation and in-house counsel work at a Fortune 50 company, I took a plunge into educational technology entrepreneurism. The company commercialized a predictive analytics model forecasting high school graduation outcomes through unique assessment measures that I licensed from a large research university. It was super cash intensive, and while it grew to a multi-million-dollar business.
My team and I were constantly managing the inconsistent cash flow inherent in school district contracting. I was on the verge of selling the company at a favorable valuation, and through an uncontrollable fluke, the deal fell apart. I was forced to derive a Plan B, and soon thereafter, my father died. Two weeks after my father’s passing, my Plan B investors ousted me from my company. They supported a coup d’etat from the Company COO, with whom there was a strained relationship. The company’s spending outpaced its revenue, and the company sank (although it still appears to be around). Ouch!
The Spark
Sitting in my basement, I had little idea what to do next. I had some pie-in-the-sky entrepreneurial ideas, but I quickly realized that they were even more cash-intensive and risky than my last entrepreneurial endeavor.
My generally supportive wife grew tired of watching me sulk and asked me to write a list of the competencies I had built and how I could capitalize upon them. Although I had stepped away from the legal field with the last venture, I was always a good attorney. I started as a courtroom advocate. Through my various experiences and coursework, I learned a ton about business management, valuation, and due diligence, among many other skills. In general, I learned how to run a business. I was also well versed in intellectual property protection as during my CEO/Founder tenure, I needed to build up and then protect my company’s IP portfolio.
Between the need to make a living and the knowledge that my background made me unemployable at a law firm at that point, I launched EmergeCounsel.
Emerging Counsel (2014-2018)
How To Start a Law Practice When You Haven’t Practiced for 8 Years and Have No Clients
In the beginning, there was nowhere to go but up. I disciplined myself to treat the launch exercise as a 50-hour-a-week job. If I wasn’t doing client work, I would be working on building the firm: client/networking coffees, blogging, and calling friends and colleagues I hadn’t spoken to in years.
What I quickly realized is that people who cared and believed in me (not necessarily the obvious ones) came out of the woodwork and gave me the support necessary to keep the firm afloat.
Ousted But Not Overlooked
First, during my years as CEO, a mentor of mine, Lloyd Rich (who recently passed away), knew how challenging the start-up process was and covertly taught me how to run a trademark practice in case things did not work out. Lloyd’s wife, Carol, was the company’s marketer.
I am fortunate that some of my early business clients came to me through my work in educational technology. For instance, Brian Bright of Trajecsys Corporation has been on my advisory board since I first conceived my educational technology idea. I am honored that he entrusted me to make EmergeCounsel general counsel for his extremely impressive and valuable enterprise.
Now – Networking
Through a mutual acquaintance, I connected with a sympathetic Westlaw representative, who gave me a discounted rate for access to the same trademark search database that large law firms use. With access to search software and investment in trademark management software, the flat-fee prosecution process called TotalTM was born. TotalTM is a high-quality brand protection that is accessible to early and mid-stage businesses.
Additionally, I reconnected with the local legal community by befriending other attorneys at various functions and mutual office locations (thank you, Rehan Hasan, Stan Doida, Pat Linden, and Jay Kamlet).
Around this time, my cousin Bruce needed a trademark for his Taiwanese eCommerce business. He told me about a conference he was attending in Ft. Lauderdale called the Seller’s Summit. I reached out to the conference’s founder, Steven Chou. I was featured on his podcast, “My Wife Quit Her Job,” and became a sponsor of the Sellers Summit.
Embracing Growth (2018-2020)
By 2018, I had built EmergeCounsel’s client base to over 250 business, general IP, and (primarily) trademark clients. However, the rapid growth posed new challenges. I found myself struggling to balance legal work, business management, and my mental health. After careful consideration, I decided to invest in a team instead of contracting one-off professionals. This decision was not without its own set of challenges, but it was a necessary step in ensuring the continued success and growth of EmergeCounsel.
Support Staff
The first step was finding a competent employee with a propensity toward a managerial role. I contacted the Denver Bar Association Placement Service, which recommended Amber VandenHout. Amber was a long-time former employee of the Colorado and Denver Bar Associations (CBA/DBA) as their Membership Manager. She came highly recommended for her personal drive, personality, and intelligence to handle a multitude of tasks in a start-up environment.
Furthermore, with the popularity of TotalTM, I needed a dedicated trademark paralegal to manage our growing docket. After extensive research, I found the only person with the very fitting domain name trademarkgirl.com: Amy O’Hara. Amy, located in Florida at the time, has worked as a trademark paralegal since 2000. Few match her knowledge of the nuances of the most arcane trademark databases.
Growing Pains
After six months of navigating our new team dynamic, at times admittedly clumsily, we hired a legal management expert, Jeff Schwarz. Jeff, a friend from law school, agreed to help us map out processes, meet client demands, and alleviate pain points related to remote vs. in-office staff expectations. We had no idea our staff retreat was going to pay in spades a few months later when the world was faced with COVID-19.
The COVID Years (2020-2022)
Our client base is geographically diverse and technologically savvy. Our systems are cloud-based, high-tech, and encrypted. Fortunately, we are 75% paper-free, so the stay-at-home order went much smoother for our staff than for many others. We faced the COVID years with minimal bumps and bruises. In some respects, our client base grew as a number of entrepreneurs could not sit still while at home and either started or grew their businesses – and they found us.
Attorney Support
As new clients found us for their IP and business needs, we found the need to expand the EmergeCounsel team. In the spring of 2021, I began my search for an associate attorney to assist with the trademark docket. After a couple of misfortunate attempts to fill the position, I hired Marie Dutton. Marie is an attorney with a background in engineering and came to EmergeCounsel as a newly licensed attorney with a sharp legal mind and a desire to learn. She has displayed competencies to the point that we are doing complex legal work in both business and IP in the United States and far beyond.
A Strong, Integrated, Client-Focused Team (2022- Present)
The end of the COVID-19 quarantine led to new challenges for our clients and brand-new inner and outer-office dynamics. But if there is one thing our staff has learned to do, it is to work together.
Our team is exceptionally cohesive. One secret to our success is that we give each other enough space to develop our internal competencies for the good of our practice and our clients.
- Amber is incredibly determined, social, and self-driven. She has built out our client experience map to ensure a deliberate, consistent experience from intake to billing. She has almost a rote knowledge of every one of our clients, where they live, how they like to be contacted, and even how much they currently owe. She also vets our marketing messages, manages the budgets, is the lead on our CLIO CRM, is our IT lead, and, on top of that, acts as a general paralegal for both my and Marie’s legal projects.
- Amy is impeccably organized, knowledgeable about USPTO trademark processes, and has extensive knowledge, including insight into the examination. Her skills allow her to review detailed search reports (sometimes many hundreds of pages) and provide preliminary analysis to Marie and me about our clients’ likelihood of success in a trademark proceeding at a very early stage. Her competencies have allowed us to achieve our TotalTM mission of providing the same quality of trademark prosecution services as a large comprehensive law firm at a fraction of the price.
- As an engineer and attorney, Marie came to us with qualities including attention to detail, a focus on problem-solving, and teamwork. Although she came to us with an interest in trademarks (and without business experience), I am in constant awe of her ability to use these skills to take on more diverse and complex projects in IP, general business, and even M&A.
The Future
“If you’re not learning, then you are stagnant. If you’re stagnant, then you’re not evolving, and the business is not progressing.” – Seth Rollins.
I am continuously reading books and attending seminars on how to best service clients and grow a law firm. But I have no idea if EmergeCounsel will grow or even stay the same. It has taken us ten years to build a cohesive team, whom I lean upon to fulfill our firm’s mission to provide sophisticated, empathetic IP and business counsel without bankrupting the client.
As things usually do, our firm is likely to change to continue our mission, and I look forward to sharing our progress in the next ten years. I am grateful to my team, our clients, friends, and contacts for making this journey happen. I wish everyone health, prosperity, and happiness in the next ten years!
The Experience
In fact, through that network, I have gained extensive legal knowledge of eCommerce. Our firm has closed over 25 eCommerce M&A deals, built intellectual property plans for hundreds of companies, and even appeared as an expert witness on legal ownership of back-end Amazon databases in arbitration.
Need help with your IP or business law needs? Contact us today for a free consultation!