Goodlawyer is a Calgary-based law company that wants to transform the way lawyers and businesses work together. They provide a range of services for businesses all shapes and sizes through their platform. Find their website here, and LinkedIn here.
In the TELUS Sky building, Goodlawyer HQ shares a space on the 19th floor with awesome Calgary-based startups ZayZoon and CostCertified. Their office is windowed from floor to ceiling, nearly the entire way around. Brett showed me around the workspace and the lounge. The three startups on the floor are all open to each other and share a lounge. Brett drops his bags off in his office and makes himself a coffee. We head to the boardroom and get into it.
Who is Brett Colvin?
I’m a Calgary boy, born and raised. I spent my university years up in Edmonton at U of A for both business school and law. I played a lot of soccer growing up, that’s what took me to Edmonton in the first place, to play for U of A. I practiced law for four and a half years at one of the big national law firms, where I got my first taste of problems in the profession, as I perceived them. The other running thread for me I’ve always been a bit of an entrepreneur, ever since I was a little kid selling golf balls out of the backyard of my uncle’s place to running a contracting and then painting business before law school. And I always had that itch to start a business again; fast forward five years since I left the firm and here we are, at Goodlawyer.
“One of the senior guys came into my office one day, slammed the door and said ‘Brett, keep coming up with your ideas, just keep them to yourself’. And I listened… I quit my job in early 2019 and haven’t looked back since.”
You’ve said that you're "changing a broken system" that your experience in a traditional law drew you into. What was this “need” to do something like for you?
I think it’s at least two-fold, if not more; there was always an underlying desire to build a business. Whether that was a painting franchise like back in Uni, or a startup. I didn’t even really understand what a startup was until probably four-ish years into my law career. But I always knew I wanted to start a business.
The other driver for Goodlawyer was seeing how disconnected the firm was – their lawyers, their talent, their clients . I saw a ton of friction and frankly, terrible incentives that I saw were driving terrible outcomes for both lawyers and clients. I thought there should be a way to use technology and a different business model to really unlock the potential of a lot of lawyers who felt left out of the current law firm structure. With my focus on the big corporate law firm, and how this didn’t fit the lives lawyers wanted to live; especially folks that wanted to spend more time with their family, I saw women left the firm in huge, huge numbers. Really talented lawyers didn’t want to pursue this somewhat arbitrary partnership track. Also, the rates we were billing out at, the billable hour model just didn’t make any sense in 2019 when we started Goodlawyer, and certainly not now in 2023.
I just knew instinctively that there would be ways to deliver service and charge based on value, as opposed to what I perceive to be an arbitrary system of clocking time no matter what you’re doing.
What was the moment of “let’s do this”? How did getting “getting started” look?
I can weirdly pinpoint a moment where I knew I was going to leave the firm and start Goodlawyer. I was known as “Mr. Ideas Guy”, which was not a compliment, and one of the senior guys came into my office one day, slammed the door and said “Brett, keep coming up with your ideas, just keep them to yourself”. And I listened; I started to plan what an exit would look like, raise a little bit of capital, 6 or 9 months later I quit my job in early 2019 and haven’t looked back since.
“Startup founders are my people. It’s been amazing to be a cheerleader for the Calgary tech ecosystem.”
Tell me about what it’s like to work at Goodlawyer.
When it comes to the business generally, I think that the most compounding aspect is the people. Compounding with respect to the business and retention, but mostly with the people. Helping them to grow through expanding their skillsets and perspectives. In order to do that you need to build a culture and an environment that promotes ideas - in stark contrast to my time at the firm. You also need to add in the purpose, the fun, the enjoyment, all the intangibles that make going to work worth it.
How do you work to manage a platform business mode and complex relationships that comes along with it?
All of our lawyers are independent, and that is key to how Goodlawyer operates. We have about 150 lawyers across Canada in the network. When you are playing this marketplace role it is really like having to businesses simultaneously, and making sure you connect the dots.
In the early days it was all about getting that initial supply – you’re looking at the first Goodlawyer. Once we got that supply the focus shifted and we had to drive demand. Where we’re at today, were able to recruit unbelievable talent and lawyers with incredible experience at all the big firms you’ve heard of, but also at Shopify and high growth companies, lawyers that have helped them scale in the past. I think it’s really unique, very few lawyers at the big firms have ever worked at an in-house environment.
We're fortunate today where at least half the lawyers brought into the network are through word-of mouth referrals from those already in the network. We’re always out there looking for amazing talent, but we have a larger influx of lawyers looking to bring their talents to Goodlawyer than we can handle on the demand side. Keeping the lawyers happy is incredibly important to the business and I’m excited for some of the product-stuff in particular we have coming next year.
What do you feel like your role in the Calgary community is?
We’ve been across Canada from a sales and lawyer perspective for a number of years now, but we have taken on an important role in the Calgary startup ecosystem and driving exposure and telling stories about the cool stuff that’s happening in Calgary techland today. We love the city. Part of my grand mission is to build a company that can disrupt this archaic legal industry, but also be one of the companies that helps propel this new generation of Calgary. I think Calgary has all the makings of a world class city – if it’s not considered one already – and I think continuing to develop the tech ecosystem is one of the most important pieces of creating the city we all want to live in the future.
We’ve been fortunate, in the early days, the startups were the driving force for us and still remain a key piece in the puzzle today. Startup founders are my people and it’s been amazing to be a cheerleader for the Calgary tech ecosystem, highlighted by our 500-person yacht party we through in Toronto. We’re excited to do it again this year and fly the Calgary flag in Toronto.
How do you drive awareness? You guys have a blog, ran a podcast, run social media… What's your process for connecting people?
The main way we drive awareness of the cool stuff going on is through social media, most notably LinkedIn, that’s where people see us for the first time and don’t stop seeing us after that. We’ve played around with a lot of different content over the last five years, the podcast is one close to my heart that we have put on hiatus, just because it was a big lift. That was orientated for talking about issues that I or Matt Scrivens found, and getting unique perspectives when we brought on guests. One of the cool things I’ve discovered in the five years since I left the firm is there are a lot of people that feel pretty similar to how I feel. There’s a risk aversion in lawyers, which is maybe why you haven’t seen so much change in the industry, but there’s a lot of people that are feeling the pains and seem to be getting on board with some of the ideas that Goodlawyer and our broader network have been bringing to the table for lawyers all over the place.
If you look at our marketing strategy for 2024, its throw a couple epic events; one will be a 500-person yacht party, the other will be our Future of Law Summit we’re bringing back in November. And keep on telling the Goodlawyer story and sharing our perspectives with our audience.
What’s coming next that you're excited for?
We’re honestly gonna be doubling down on what was working this year, Fractional Counsel was a relatively new product that launched late 2022, it’s been cycling for a little over a year now, and sometimes it feels like we’ve struck gold with this white space we’ve discovered. And it came about very organically, from the most successful companies we’ve been working with for years wanting something more entrenched, more embedded in their team and less friction when it came to getting upfront quotes because there was such a high volume of legal needs. This fractional approach has been working really well and I’m excited to keep doubling down in 2024. And taking guidance from even the other two scale ups on this floor, ZayZoon and CostCertified. We’re starting to think about our U.S. entry more seriously – when and how. And just continuing to drive this firm belief there’s a better way to do a lot of the legal work businesses need, of all shapes and sizes.
What content recommendations do you have for the readers?
Assuming that they’ll be a lot of founders reading this, highly recommend “Founders Podcast”, with David Senra, its excellent. And for any of the CEO’s listening I got this recommendation from listening to a different pod with one of the partners at Benchmark. It’s very short, called Five Temptations of a CEO by Patrick Lencioni. For a 90-minute audiobook listen, it packed a lot of punch.
Thank you Brett for making this happen.
Writer and Photographer | Sam Doty
