The (Two) Things We Do and Everything We Don't

“So, uh, what does Goodlawyer actually DO?”

Answering this question is not as easy as it once was. We’ve DONE a lot of things. Some big. Some small. Some worked. Some didn’t.

It’s hard for us to keep up sometimes too. Goodlawyer is moving fast ??

For everyone curious about the current state of the union, this post is written for you.

It includes the description, history, and value proposition of our two main product lines (Fractional General Counsel and Project-Based legal work) and a short summary of the things we explicitly don’t do.

Before we jump in — thanks for taking the time to read this! Your interest in Goodlawyer is the wind beneath our wings while we try to build a business that’s #GoodForCanada .

So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Fractional General Counsel

This is our flagship product, our pride and joy ???

It involves dedicating 12 - 36 hours of a lawyer’s time to a specific client each month. The lawyer takes on the role of an in-house general counsel, taking the lead on operational legal work like commercial contracts, corporate management, human resources, privacy, compliance, and more.?

The guarantee of hours each month provides stability for the lawyer, who can drop their hourly rate substantially and dedicate more time to integrating with their client’s business.?

The value proposition is simple: save money by bringing your operational legal work in house and save time on work that would otherwise be DIY. Ancillary benefits include adding an experienced executive to the c-suite, turning around sales contracts faster, and mitigating otherwise unforeseen risks.

Fractional General Counsel arose organically. A couple of our users needed their lawyers every single month, so they set up standardized arrangements with them. We noticed these signals in September 2022 and started a pilot. The pilot concluded in December 2022 and we officially launched the product in January 2023.

Since Fractional General Counsel launched, we have been able to support some truly incredible companies, including Helcim, Trufla, CostCertified, and Clariti. The companies that Fractional General Counsel best suits tend to have between 50 and 200 employees, sell B2B, and are continuing to grow.

Project-Based

Three years ago, this was all Goodlawyer offered.?

We originally launched with micro-services, expanded into common corporate and commercial projects, and then added fully custom project options. These new offerings were driven by user requests. As people got used to buying legal services through the platform, users began to trust our lawyers with larger and larger projects, which required more and more flexibility from our software.

Law is most often done in a Project-Based manner, so this is nothing new.?

What Goodlawyer did bring to the table is the aggregation of pre-vetted independent legal talent from all over Canada. These lawyers have far less overhead than large national firms, so they can offer lower prices. Despite this, business owners often avoid working with sole practitioners directly because it can be really hard to find someone who fits the many criteria a legal project may have.?

For example, you may be looking for a lawyer who will spend the next two years filing and defending a suite of international patents worth millions to your business. In most cases, you won’t even be able to find customer reviews to help you compare firms.

To boil it down; Our Project-Based product allows you to connect directly with the perfect lawyer (experience, rate, timeline) for your project —?whether that’s a suite of trademarks, a contract drafting, or a Series A financing.?

Project-Based work can be useful for companies of all sizes. To date, we’ve had more than 6,000 Canadian businesses, big and small, take advantage of our software for their legael projects.

What We Don’t Do

While we have been developing the product lines above, we have also been reducing the overall scope of our business. This is to ensure that we can be proud of the work we do and customers leave satisfied with the results.

Here are a list of things we used to support, but have stepped away from:

• Litigation
• Family Law
• Real Estate
• Criminal Law

And a few things that have never been core to our offering, but are sometimes miscredited to us:

• Contract Templates
• Document Automation
• AI Contract Reviews

The next thing to clarify is pricing.?

Yes, most services available through Goodlawyer are more affordable than if they were purchased from a large national law firm. This is because our software allows them to operate independently, with little or no overhead.?

No, they are not cheap. The vast majority of the lawyers on the platform have more than ten years of experience at blue chip firms and/or in house at reputable international firms and can be expected to charge rates that make sense based on the rarity of their skillset and the breadth and depth of their expertise.

The final thing to remember is that Goodlawyer is a software platform, not a law firm. We don’t deliver any legal services ourselves, they are all delivered by the independent lawyers using the platform.?

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Thanks so much for reading! I have a great time writing this post and I hope you found it useful in some way. If you’ve got any feedback, let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear your thoughts.