Behind the Brand®

[00:00:00] Jeff Adamson: Welcome to Behind the Brand, presented by Neo. We take an inside look at the leaders behind today's most influential brands. I'm your host, Jeff Adamson. As co-founder of Neo Financial and SkipTheDishes, I'm fascinated by what it takes to build great companies. On this podcast, we'll learn from leaders that are reimagining, transforming, and innovating in the financial and retail industries across Canada. Let's get going!

INTRO

[00:00:48] Jeff Adamson: Alright, Brett. Good for you to be here at the Neo campus. The first time I met you was when I came out to Calgary, this is pre-Neo, and we were at the Wild Rose Brewery, I think. After the talk, I asked you what you were doing, what you're up to and you said you're building the SkipTheDishes for lawyers. How far along in the idea were you? And that was probably twenty, early twenty-nineteen, I think.

[00:01:29] Brett Colvin: Oh, I mean, we were at the very beginning.

[00:01:32] Jeff Adamson: You had a name, though.

[00:01:34] Brett Colvin: We did. I mean, I hilariously bought the domains for Goodlawyer in first-year law school on a total whim. I assumed I would open a law firm, and it would probably be called Goodlawyer.

The name actually came from a very specific moment. I went up to UofA for both undergrad, did a business degree, and then stuck around and did law school up there as well. Spent a good seven years up in Edmonton. But I had a coffee guy from my business days, there's like a mall that connected the law school and the business school, and I had my go-to coffee guy in there for most of my undergrad. And then I was gone for a bit, and I came back and saw him. And he was this guy named Moe, ran a little coffee shop, and he remembered me.

[00:02:24] Jeff Adamson: Shout out to Moe.

[00:02:25] Brett Colvin: Oh, shout out to Moe for sure. But anyway, we're having a nice chat, and then he asked me why I'm back. And I said I was in law school. And this, like, jovial guy got all serious and looked at me, and he said, be a good lawyer. Be a good lawyer. He said it twice.

And I literally went back to contracts class. I was, like, just in my own world and bought a couple [of] domains [laughs]. And then, you know, a decade later almost, turns out it was actually [a] pretty useful little exercise, so thank you, Moe.

[00:02:52] Jeff Adamson: Do you get a lot of compliments on the name?

[00:02:25] Brett Colvin: Yeah. The name's pretty good, I think. Definitely not one of the obstacles that we're overcoming right now, we're pretty satisfied with the name and being very intentional with our IP strategy to protect the brand and, you know, max that component out because in the legal services world, brand is hugely valuable. So for us, that's been something that's been important from from day one.

[00:03:16] Jeff Adamson: Which is probably surprising to a lot of people when you think of, like, powerful brands. It is true though because a lot of the firms that are using different law firms are using them because of the brand behind and the reputation that comes with that firm.

[00:03:35] Brett Colvin: Hundred percent. When it comes to the brand in legal services, you know, most of the firms that the business world has heard of and, you know, I know you've worked with a number of them in the past. Those are, like, hundred-year-old institutions that accumulated that brand and built that brand over decades or centuries, and coming in as, you know, a startup to try to disrupt that world requires a brand that can stand up to the guys that have been around for a hundred years.

So that has been a huge motivation and priority from a marketing perspective and, you know, an ethos that we have at GoodLawyer to, you know, keep building that brand, you know, day-by-day and trying to really showcase that there's a different way for lawyers and businesses to work together that you just can't find within the traditional model.

[00:04:40] Jeff Adamson: You mentioned earlier in law school, that you bought the domain because you thought I'm gonna have my own firm. Were you always someone who was gonna like, were you very deliberate in going to school knowing that you were gonna start your own company someday? Like, is that entrepreneurial bug kinda in you from very early on, or is this something that you, you know, you went out and you started working, and you're like, “Okay, I just can't work for other people, I wanna run my own thing.”?

[00:05:04] Brett Colvin: Definitely, I would say I've always been an entrepreneur. I started selling golf balls when I was four years old, getting my brother to find them. He was my supply, and I would sell them, you know, out of the backyard when we were out in Kelowna at my uncle's place. So I've always had that entrepreneurial itch, I've always loved business.

The more random thing was actually going into law. You know, I did my undergrad, took all the prereqs per my dad pushing to do the accounting thing, realized I didn't wanna do the accounting thing, and maybe would have started a business at that point, but my dad passed away, sadly, at the end of my undergrad. He was pushing law really hard. And, frankly, At that moment in time, I wasn't ready to kinda go out into the real world. School always came pretty easy, and I was just [thinking], keep mom happy, go to law school, that seems like a productive step. And next thing I knew, you know, I was in the world of law getting recruited by, you know, big national law firms.

[00:05:59] Jeff Adamson: Sorry to hear about your father. What was it about law that really drew you to it over something closer to business like finance, accounting, sales, [and] marketing?

[00:06:12] Brett Colvin: I think it was a combination of being strong academically and having written the LSAT on a whim during business school. My dad's best man was a lawyer or is a lawyer, very successful, out in Kelowna now. And so that was kind of always around, you know, not, like, all the time, but it was Uncle Barry, very successful. And, yeah, my, I think my dad, who was a stockbroker, that's what I wanted to be originally was a stockbroker, but I saw the ups and downs of that during his life, and he didn't want that for me. So he was really pushing this law thing, so it was always kind of in the back of my mind.

As I learned over my, you know, four and a half years in the big shop, I love taking risks. I love making decisions and just providing sort of guidance and risk assessments wasn't enough, you know? I was doing deals with clients, and, like, I wanted to be part of the deal. I didn’t just want to paper the deal, I wanted to do the deal. So that kind of hunger to always, to eventually build my own business, it was always there. And there was no moment, really ever in the firm context where I thought I would be a partner one day. I always thought I would cut my teeth, get the expertise, and the credibility, and then go and start something. I did not think I would start a startup originally.

[00:07:25] Jeff Adamson: And so going through the process of becoming a lawyer, I recall listening to this podcast Malcolm Gladwell was doing, about how in the LSAT, it optimizes for people who are good at being fast, but not necessarily good at being lawyers. Having gone through the process of becoming a lawyer, what do you think needs to change about that process? Like, what do you think they're, do you think they're optimizing for maybe the wrong thing? And in Malcolm's case, in reality, you actually don't need to be, like, super, super fast. It's actually better to be prepared, and it's actually better to be right than it is to be quick. What do you think that if you could go back in time, you think that we should change about how we're creating lawyers?

[00:08:05] Brett Colvin: Oh, I yeah, that's a big question. I think that the whole model for assessment, qualification, you know, the education, obviously, is completely busted, starting with the LSAT. You nailed it.

Whenever I have, you know, an aspiring law student reach out to me and look for tips, I tell them, I'm like, when you write the LSAT, write it as fast as you can because it's going to fly by. And I think that was one of my advantages was I can write a test really fast, but I also get bored really easily. And a lot of the kind of drudgery, as one of my first professors called it way back in law school, was super challenging for me. And that has no sort of application or relatedness with the LSAT or a hundred percent final when you're in law school.

The other thing I, the other problem that people talk about all the time is that when you finish law school, it's so different than, like, going to med school and then doing, like, a really extended residency. Law school, you come out, you know how to read cases, you know how to write tests, you know how to write papers, you have no idea how to do a deal or really draft a contract.

And the expectation and sort of the unspoken deal between the big firms and the legal and education system in Canada is we're gonna train them how to actually be lawyers, but we're gonna get first dibs on them too. So when you're going through law school, they have this recruiting system they call OCIs, on-campus interviews, and only the biggest firms are invited for that, and it leads to this world where all of the students, including me when I was in law school, without any idea as to what it's actually like to work there or, you know, what you'd be doing even, are clamoring and competing to get those interviews. And if you don't get an interview, it feels like you failed.

Yeah. I think the law schools need to do a way better job at preparing folks to actually be practicing lawyers and have more tangible skills coming out of law school after three years. Like, you don't need to read cases for three years, there's more tangible things that are actually gonna be part of your day-to-day as a practicing lawyer. And I also think that the law schools need to broaden the horizons of students and make sure that everybody's very aware that there are alternatives inside and outside business law that aren't at the big firms. And, you know, this past year, we attended a couple of the OCIs, so to speak, but we were the only company there that wasn't a national law firm or a large regional law firm in some of the cities.

[00:10:50] Jeff Adamson: Yeah. It's interesting too because I felt it was the same way when I was in undergrad too. There was a few big firms that were just, like, black holes of talent. Like, it just drew everyone into them, and everyone was like, “Oh, did you get an interview?” And, “Oh my god. I heard they're, you know, they're probably gonna get that job” and [it] creates this kind of competition internally, which I'm a big fan of competition, I think it helps make you better, but I wonder if we're we're underestimating just the value of just getting hands-on experience, period.

Like, whether that's at, and a good friend of mine [that] I grew up with, he ended up working for Bennett Jones eventually, but his first job out of law school was volunteering at the White Buffalo Youth Lodge. And he's got people coming in, you know, single mothers who are fighting to just put, you know, food on the table for three kids at home because their ex isn't paying alimony or, you know, someone who's got a whole bunch of criminal charges and just trying to get their life together. And he's working on these cases kinda for free, and so I think he did that for a year or two, and that basically gave him so much experience and credibility, having no resources at all at his disposal. He didn't have this massive firm, he didn't have this massive brand behind him. But he really got to, like, kinda get in the trenches, I guess.

[00:12:12] Brett Colvin: Solve real problems.

[00:12:13] Jeff Adamson: Yeah and before he went to go and work for a larger firm, and then he's kinda gone on and done a bunch of stuff. He's actually written a couple [of] books now. Shout out to Patrick Trumpy if you're listening, Pat.

[00:12:19] Brett Colvin: Yeah. Come check out Goodlawyer, my friend. You nailed it again. On that one, the students that came out of law school who were actually competent to do legal things, like, far and away were the folks that were really deeply involved at UofA, it was called SLS, Student Legal Services. And I did a little bit of that. Frankly, it was, you know, something to put on the resume, you know, in that competitive environment. But the folks that, like, really got into it, on whether it was the family side or the criminal side, they were basically practicing law under supervision, but they were flexing their real legal muscles, in some cases, for three years. And so when they were done law school, they were equipped.

In the corporate setting, it didn't exist as much, you know? And I'll give a shout-out to my old firm, BLG., they have, at least at the time I was there, BLG Venture Clinic, where it also opened the opportunity for students to get involved and support early-stage startups and stuff with, you know, some basic kinda corporate work. So I think getting your hands dirty as early as you can is definitely the way that you can kinda propel your career faster and faster.

One other just funny anecdote, they changed the rule after my first year in law school because it was so outrageous, but they started bumping up when you could do the OCIs. So, originally, it was just like second-year law students, and then it went to first-year law students because they wanted to get in there earlier.

[00:13:48] Jeff Adamson: And then high school students.

[00:13:49] Brett Colvin: Yeah [Laughs]. Like, in my first year of law, Josh, who, you know, our COO, he got hired in, like, his second or third week of law school. He had not done a single task. But you've met Josh, you know, he's pretty exquisite, and they're like, “We want you”. So you're three weeks in, and you've already got a job lined up that is supposed to be, you know, where you spend your career. And you've done that in the first month of law school. Like, it was pretty wild.

[00:14:12] Jeff Adamson: Yeah and I wonder what kind of strange behaviors that creates. But you graduated from law school, you got, was it, did you go straight into BLG?

[00:14:22] Brett Colvin: Yeah, I summered at BLG and then articled there, and…

[00:14:25] Jeff Adamson: You were deliberate though. You already kind of knew that you wanted to do your own thing eventually, that must have made it a lot easier in some, easier and harder, but easier to know what you need to absorb from the people around you. Or did it make it actually harder because you're like, I just don't wanna be here?

[00:14:40] Brett Colvin: I definitely don't think it made it harder in that sense, and I had a lot to learn and, frankly, I really loved working with a lot of my colleagues. I had a ton of amazing friends, including Josh, who's now instrumental in what we're doing at Goodlawyer.

You know, if I reflect back, summer was a breeze and my primary objective over summer and mission was to secure sufficient table space at Ceili’s during the World Cup for partners [laughs]. I was, you know, the big soccer guy in the group, so that was bestowed on me, and I took that job very seriously.

[00:15:18] Jeff Adamson: That sounds like at least a one-year project.

[00:15:19] Brett Colvin: [Laughs] It was, it kept me busy for a good chunk of summer for sure, but that was, like, a bit of a mirage because you come back for articling, and you would appreciate the grind, I know you like the grind. Articling was It was a new level in certainly in the work environment, kinda like you, not to quite the same sort of mountaintops, but I played competitive sports my whole life and, like, at very intense levels. So, you know, working hard was kinda baked into me from [an] early age, but articling was truly intense, and deep, deep relationships were forged with my fellow articling students, many of whom are on the Goodlawyer cap table now. But it was I guess, intensely challenging, but also ultimately [a] rewarding year because you do level up in terms of your skills when you're working that hard. You develop these great relationships with people that are going through that same grind with you, and then you get hired back and you go and find a home, so to speak, within the firm. So that was good.

In my second year, you know, getting up to speed was challenging. Again, even after articling, like, I was in financial services and commercial real estate, and they don't use the articling students as much. So I was hired into a group, but I still didn't know what I was doing. You know? I'm like, law school, articling, now I'm into a group, and I'm, like, having to find mentorship because I was a pretty lost puppy for a while. That's not an unusual scenario. You really have to, like, go out of your way to, like, get someone to care enough about you that they're gonna teach you the ropes because they don't have any built-in mentorship systems within the firm. You get paid to bring in work, and you get paid to bill work. You no one's getting paid for mentoring the next generation. But that was…

[00:17:03] Jeff Adamson: But I think everyone knows, though, and this is something that surprises me that if you arrive at a firm and kind of no matter what company it is, and you look around and you're, and you look and say, and find out, and it doesn't take very long to know who's the rockstar here. Who's the most respected person? What are they doing? Why are they where they are? How did they do it? And then you could either learn from observing, or you can just walk up to them and say, “Hey, how did you get to where you are? What are you doing differently?” Or, “Hey, can I buy you a coffee?”

And maybe they don't have time for, like, an hour a day of mentorship, but chances are the people who got to the heights that they got to got there because they had a lot of help from other people. And usually, those people recognize that they need to pay it back, you know, or pay it forward, whatever however you look at it. And a lot of times, they enjoy doing it too because they feel like they're contributing to the kind of next generation of people who are coming up. Did you, were you able to get some of that as you kinda got into your mid-years at the firms, or you got completely shut down?

[00:18:07] Brett Colvin: No, absolutely I found that. [A] hundred percent. I think there is this additional sort of layer or cloud kind of overlaying that scenario, being this intensity to hit a target, for everyone including, like, the most senior partners. And when that target is quite literally hours billed…

[00:18:34] Jeff Adamson: Kind of a war of attrition.

[00:18:36] Brett Colvin: Definitely. The way that you, like, perceive your time…

[00:18:39] Jeff Adamson: Yeah.

[00:18:40] Brett Colvin: Changes. It alters, you know? Like, my whole life was running in six-minute intervals all the time, even on weekends. And so trying to carve in that mentorship opportunity and, yeah, like, you're dead right that's what you have to do, and that's exactly what, ultimately, I did. I found, you know, a senior associate in my group, Nolan Ritzel, who is also now a Goodlawyer. Love Nolan. I finally was just like, “Dude, we're gonna we gotta be friends. I'm gonna figure out ways to add value to you, but you gotta teach me how to do this.”

[00:19:09] Jeff Adamson: Yeah.

[00:19:10] Brett Colvin: And then there was also another partner in particular that, I mean I got mentorship from a lot of different places, like, again I don't, the people are good. I think the firm structure In a lot of ways is broken, but, like, good people that cared about me and invested in me.

But one woman in particular, Maria Doerksen, she was kinda known as, like, the mom of the floor and took the time to teach me when I really needed something. But, again, like, hard to get her time. Very challenging. So getting a guy like Nolan who's much closer to me in terms of age and seasonedness, that was really the key and, frankly, he taught me almost everything I know about doing big financing deals and that kind of thing.

[00:19:45] Jeff Adamson: So I got a two-parter for you. First is, what was the the moment when you realized that there was a problem in in terms of the way that that legal work was being done? And then what was the jumping-off point for you to say, “Okay, I see the problem, and then now I have enough conviction that I'm gonna go out and try to solve it?”

[00:20:09] Brett Colvin: I'd say I first, sort of, my spidey senses were tingling in first-year law.

[00:20:14] Jeff Adamson: Of law school?

[00:20:15] Brett Colvin: Of law school.

[00:20:16] Jeff Adamson: Jesus. So you're just starting, and and you're already like, “Oh, this is a broken system.”

[00:20:21] Brett Colvin: Oh, yeah. There was something fishy in the air. Like, it would, it felt weird. And it is like, It's kind of like this giant sort of cult or, like, you know…

I got there and it just, it was, it felt weird. And, frankly, I think a big piece of it was before law school, like, kind of right in between my undergrad and going to law school, I ran a painting franchise, and I loved it. All I could think about was paint all the time. And [I] did that with a close friend of mine and, like, had an absolute blast building this painting franchise and, like, building a real business. I mean, we had, like, twenty guys painting for us at one point. It was, we were cruising, had a blast, but a key thing that I learned while I was running the painting business was how to estimate.

And then I got into the world of law, and I'm like, “Nobody estimates anything? Why not?” It was like, “Well, this is just the way we do it so, like, don't fuck with that.” Like, this is how it is, so just, like, do it how it is. And I that that struck me as early as law school, and then the conviction built slowly over time. I think I started to, I don't think, I started to dig into startups and what they were all about, listening primarily to ‘How I Built This’ on the train. I went on secondment and worked in-house at a big financial institution for a year in Vancouver, and I took the train to work every day and listened to podcast after podcast after podcast and just started connecting dots.
I'm like, that seems actually, that marketplace model, that seems kind of applicable to this world that I'm slowly becoming a part of. So that's where the idea for the startup sort of germinated was that time in Vancouver. But the final conviction, the nail in the coffin was, I've told this story before, one of the senior guys coming into my office one day, kind of my boss, and slamming the door because I was Mister Ideas guy at the firm, and it was not appreciated. And just saying to me, “Brett, keep coming up with your ideas. Just keep them to yourself.” I know that he felt like he was trying to do me a favor, but for me, I was, you know, I thought you've been throwing all the ideas in the garbage, but, like, now, like, you don't even wanna hear them. You don't even wanna hear the ideas. So for me, that was kind of the final straw and, you know, raised a little bit of capital and left the the firm probably about six months later.

[00:23:03] Jeff Adamson: So were you kinda moonlighting at the same time, or were you just basically like, “Hey, cold turkey, I'm gonna quit this”, and then gonna start working the other one? Or was there, “Hey, I'm gonna work on Goodlawyer kind of evenings, weekends”, or just working at a big firm, just doesn't, you just have no time for it?

[00:23:18] Brett Colvin: Definitely didn't have a lot of time for it. Certainly starting to scheme and think about what this might look like and what I would need to do it, like, raising a little bit of the early capital so that, you know, I could eat after I left my job, you know, started tucking away savings kind of in preparation. But yeah, I mean, we got started for real when I left [in] early 2019, and it's evolved a lot since then because, as I'm sure you experienced building Skip versus Neo, the first rodeo is, it's pretty wild.

[00:23:46] Jeff Adamson: So tell us about the problem that Goodlawyer is solving, and then, and how has it evolved over time now that you're, you know, about five years in now?

[00:23:54] Brett Colvin: Yeah. So, I mean, the problem, or my, at least my awareness of the problem, is a lot more nuanced and evolved today than it was in the early days. In the early days, it was pretty simple. Billable hours seems stupid and we should be able to fixed-fee quote most services. That was it. And we thought that it would make perfect sense, and we could do it for all areas of law right off the bat.

[00:24:30] Jeff Adamson: Yeah, it always seems so simple [laughs].

[00:24:32] Brett Colvin: [Laughs] Oh, yeah. You know? We're like, “Oh yeah, Airbnb for legal services. Boom!” Like, that's what the first platform more or less looked like. But over the years, as we, you know, we've gotten smarter, we, the first big sort of, I don't know if I’d call it a pivot but refinement, was recognizing that we were most successful with business services as compared to family or more personal services. And that also aligned beautifully, like, with my passion.

Ifeel like a pretty thoroughbred entrepreneur. Like, I've always had that kinda gene in me. So it was an area that I was also really passionate about as opposed to divorces and criminal matters. Like, entrepreneurs are my people, and that made a lot of sense.

[00:25:20] Jeff Adamson: You were giving fixed quotes on, like, a criminal defense?

[00:25:25] Brett Colvin: You know what's funny, though? The criminal lawyers actually are some of the best in the entire profession at providing fixed-fee quotes. Criminal lawyers provide more fixed-fee quotes than most of the areas of law.

[00:25:36] Jeff Adamson: Jesus.

[00:25:37] Brett Colvin: Yeah, yeah. [A] hundred percent.

[00:25:40] Jeff Adamson: Why is that? Because it seems to me that would be a hard one because, like, new evidence comes out, and you're like, “Oh, this is gonna be way harder than I expected.”

[00:25:46] Brett Colvin: Yeah and, you know, I'm sure that it does vary a lot, but I think there's a concern for a lot of criminal lawyers when it comes to collecting, so they like to get…

[00:25:58] Jeff Adamson: Paid up front?

[00:25:59] Brett Colvin: Yeah. I mean, a lot of lawyers like to get their retainers up front, but, you know, there's a lot of stuff within criminal law that is, you know, I don't wanna say it's routine, but it's kind of it's very common. You know?

[00:26:00] Like, a misdemeanor is simple. It like, there's like, are you getting a fixed-fee for the murder trial? Probably not. But, you know, if you have a disorderly, they know how to do that pretty straightforward.

[00:26:22] Jeff Adamson: So then how are you matching up supply and demand then on the business services side?

[00:26:26] Brett Colvin: Yeah, so just back back to the evolution. So narrowed it to business, got
even smarter and perhaps took advantage of a bit of a tailwind back in kinda 2021 with, like, startups exploding and just focusing, laser-focused on you know, we can serve businesses of, sort of, all flavors at this time because of the talent, but focusing, laser-focused on helping startups, that was the world we were living in. We were super relatable. You know, they're Innovative by definition. So that was sort of our first wedge into a growing and very narrow niche, startups in Canada. And from there, that kind of eventually emerged into, you know, those startups growing up and becoming scaleups and us serving them, which then unlocked new doors with much larger organizations that, back in the early days, didn't feel like something that we would do for a really long time, if ever.

So definitely have experienced that evolution and finding out the root cause or, you know, a better understanding of the pain points that businesses, whether it's a startup, scaleup, or enterprise, have when it comes to their legal needs. And, you know, trying to fill this gap now with our fractional GC offering that is, you know, not the same level of commitment and duration to hire as an full-time in-house counsel, but also something that fits way better than full external, where you've got a lawyer at, you know, a big firm or wherever with a hundred clients, huge hourly rates.

Being able to find that gap in the middle with highly specialized talent or extra horsepower, but on that part-time, more flexible basis, has, as it seems, been very valuable to businesses, but also is creating this opportunity for lawyers to truly practice in a different way with a lot of the security that they're looking for, whether it be an in-house or a private practice role.

[00:28:21] Jeff Adamson: Yeah, it seems that there's a number of different gaps. There are startups or small businesses that can't afford to have a lawyer on payroll, period, and they need help. Then there's people who have a lawyer on payroll, but maybe not a senior lawyer or, like, a true GC, and then they need access to that talent from time to time. And then there's people who have a GC on staff, but then they still need to use external a lot, and then that's expensive. So there's, like, being able to have GC or external on demand and not have to pay GC and external rates, I think is definitely something that I've seen as well.

[00:28:46] Brett Colvin: Yeah and, I mean, you know, this is still, in my view, early days Goodlawyer. You know, we've been building it now for close to five years, but there's still so much learning and growth in our future as we continue identifying more of the problems and figuring out, you know, more interesting solutions to them.

I think why I've been bullish on Goodlawyer from day one, even in the very broad marketplace days, is just the lack of innovation in this space and where I saw sort of fundamental core issues with the law firm business model. No good lawyer would ever recommend to their client to set up a business like a large corporate law firm is set up? Because it doesn't make any sense. It drives weird incentives, [and] limits true innovation because you can't benefit from the future-state of the firm because you don't own a piece of the firm. You have a lease on the profit share.

So that's why I've felt that there's an opportunity to build something different while also the whole business is predicated on the assumption that we're always, or for the next century, we’re gonna need good lawyers to support businesses, and then it's not just gonna all be automated away with AI. That you're still gonna need these very smart and dedicated humans to flex their legal muscles and support businesses in a unique way that, you know, I think as our world continues to become more and more complex, is really important for success.

[00:30:26] Jeff Adamson: How is technology being applied? I was curious. It wouldn't be a podcast in 2023 without talking about AI, so…

[00:30:30] Brett Colvin: Naturally. Bought that domain this year too.

[00:30:34] Jeff Adamson: Goodlawyer.ai?

[00:30:35] Brett Colvin: You got it.

[00:30:36] Jeff Adamson: Someone told me that the, is it Antigua, is ai? Like, it's like we're .ca in Canada, and Antigua is .ai. That's, like, actually the countries domain?

[00:30:47] Brett Colvin: Oh, I didn't know that.

[00:30:48] Jeff Adamson: Well apparently, they are making bank right now.

[00:30:50] Brett Colvin: [Laughing] Yeah, no kidding.

[00:30:51] Jeff Adamson: Like, as soon as ChatGPT came out, everyone just rushed, and Antigua is just swimming in cash now. With AI, like, how do you see you know, what what's your non-defensive answer to how AI is gonna be applied to the legal industry.

[00:31:06] Brett Colvin: Oh, it's gonna be applied in countless ways, and it's gonna be a huge game changer for, I think, the industry as a whole. I guess I got a few comments on that.

One, again, the assumption is that you're always gonna need lawyers, but there's a lot of work that lawyers do that is incredibly inefficient. For us, that starts with the business of law actually running a business as an independent lawyer, sole practitioner, which is very core to who we serve on the lawyer side. Like, that's who we're all about. We're not plugging into big law firms. We're recruiting lawyers that have, you know, left the big firms or left the in-house role that want to stand up their own business, but running a small business is, comes with it all sorts of challenges. It's more complicated than a lot in the legal context because there's a lot of additional rules and, you know, professional sort of obligations. And then practicing law is also, like, quite a hard job. So trying to make it easier for those independents to run their business is really where our focus has been from a software perspective and layering in AI to continue expediting basic business tasks is where we're starting.

But then at, like, a more general level, there was a time where lawyers wrote every contract with ink on a scroll and then we got typewriters, and it got a little faster. Then we got computers and email and word processors, and all of a sudden, we're way more efficient than we used to be. And then you've got companies like Thomson Reuters who we're we're partnered with, who have billions of dollars invested in producing the best precedents and templates and, you know, context. No lawyer today starts with a blank page and writes a contract. They all start with a precedent.

Where I see AI getting layered in is just another revolution and a very powerful one, but in the same way that, you know, having a precedent expedites you from having to write the contract on a piece of paper, which my granddad did for me once, which was quite hilarious. AI to me just is something that's going to give lawyers way more leverage, superpowers to practice more efficiently, and just do a better job because of the amount of information that can be processed, and then getting the lawyer's insight and ability to communicate that into the business where it's needed.

But the final thing I'll say on that is there is so much unmet legal need. And I'm not just talking about the sort of legal aid crisis for, you know, low or mid-income that can't afford lawyers, I'm talking about within businesses. There is so much unmet legal need within businesses of all sizes that I don't see AI as a threat, I see it as an opportunity to make legal more important and more valuable to the businesses that it's serving.

[00:33:51] Jeff Adamson: It seems to me it'll probably impact consumer[s] first, people who just need a basic consent form drawn up. Like, it'll kinda chip away at all those. Like, all those will kind of go and get automated because you can just go and say, “Hey, draft me a consent form for this organization and this purpose”, and then it's done in, like, two seconds. Normally, you might have walked down or got a friend or, you know, a small family office to do it.

[00:34:15] Brett Colvin: Today, you would just go to Law Depot.

[00:34:16] Jeff Adamson: Yeah.

[00:34:18] Brett Colvin: You would just go and download a template for free or for five bucks, and now you could just put it in[to] ChatGPT. In both scenarios, though, if there's not much risk with the thing you're doing, you don't really care about it that much, that's a great way to do it because getting somebody to sign something is better than nothing. But if there's a material risk, the fact is, like, you don't know If that consent form is effective or not. I think the expertise will continue to be important.

[00:34:44] Jeff Adamson: Yeah, I’m surprised a lot of people don't look at legal as insurance. Like, to me, that's how I look at it. Like, I don't like paying for car insurance, home insurance, life insurance, but I still do because in the event that something goes wrong, I wanna be covered.

That's very much like, that's the purpose that law serves in many ways for businesses and for people. Is it like, listen, yes, if everything goes well, this piece of paper will never be used. But if things don't go perfectly, then you're you're covered because you already have everything written out and agreed upon.

[00:35:14] Brett Colvin: Yeah, I mean definitely, there's a…

[00:35:16] Jeff Adamson: It seems like common sense, but I'm just saying for a lot of people, they just don't, they see “Oh, I have to pay a lawyer five grand”. And I'm like, well, if you don't pay them five grand, you may have to pay a million at some future date that you don't know about.

[00:35:27] Brett Colvin: Yeah or you'll lose this right in your busines,s or this deal will fall through, or whatever. There's definitely a huge component of CYA or insurance when it comes to having a tight legal function. So that is obviously a key piece as, you know, managing risk in a similar way as you would with insurance. But I do think it goes further than that. And I think folks who really leverage legal in their business are able to unlock opportunities that they didn't even know were there.

You're in a highly regulated financial services space, having a deep understanding of what the rules are, where there's opportunity, where there's, like, mitigated risk, maybe some risk but you've got an understanding of, like, a sort of an attack angle that you didn't see before that could have serious product ramifications or business ramifications. I think legal is underutilized as a strategic [tool].

[00:36:19] Jeff Adamson: Well even in our company, like, a lot of people don't even understand how we could even exist. They're like, “Wait, you're a bank, you're not a bank. How are you able to collect money, and how can you do credit cards if you're not a bank?” And, like, “How is the customer protected? How are we protected?” That's all held together by a legal framework that protects everyone involved.

[00:36:38] Brett Colvin: A hundred percent.

[00:36:38] Jeff Adamson: Between us and the banks and the card networks and the customer. Like, everyone is…

[00:36:43] Brett Colvin: Your whole business is very intimately built into a less-than-optimized regulatory framework that allows you to do some things and doesn't allow you to do other things. And, you know, I was chatting with [a] very early-stage employee of a very large FinTech in Canada last week who was talking about how they broke the rules for, like, a year intentionally because they wanted to ask for forgiveness instead of permission. And that was, like, a very calculated risk they took, because if they didn't, there was a good chance the business wasn't gonna be able to make it through that period. And when they came back around and, like, got in touch with the regulator and shared all the information. They were able to show data that, like, the way that they did it doesn't harm the consumer, Which is the whole point of having the regulator in the first place.

So, again, it's like, you know, there's opportunities in that legal framework that if you're running a painting franchise, probably don't need to worry too much about strategic legal sort of initiatives. But if you're running a company like Neo Financial.

[00:37:48] Jeff Adamson: Yeah.

[00:37:49] Brett Colvin: You better.

[00:37:50] Jeff Adamson: A different game.

[00:37:51] Brett Colvin: Yeah.

[00:37:52] Jeff Adamson: Have you guys raised a venture?

[00:37:53] Brett Colvin: So we have raised a few rounds of capital. Family, friends, preseed. What I like to refer to as our “sneaky seed” last year, and we do have, like, some family offices and a very small kind of venture fund.

[00:38:04] Jeff Adamson: What was that process like? Like, I guess because a lot of this is, [it] seems like it's coming up as an issue again about, and this was just publicly talked about, how the Canadian pension plan, how little it invests in Canada. They may say, well, Canada's a small economy relative to the US, but even when you kind of do like for like and you do it proportionately, like, we're still not really investing and betting on our own economy. We're investing proportionately more abroad than other national pension funds.

Many startups go south because they're, you know, or raise from American VCs. Most of the VC capital we've raised at Neo has been from American VCs because Canadians just don't typically place big bets on companies. What was that experience raising capital like for you guys?

[00:38:47] Brett Colvin: I'd say that we raised capital in, definitely not like the expected path or you know? We didn't raise capital from any of the VCs locally or in Toronto or anything like that.

[00:38:59] Jeff Adamson: Was that deliberate, or was that just you tried and weren't able to, and then you just kinda went a different path?

[00:39:04] Brett Colvin: I think it was, I wouldn't say we tried a lot, but we definitely tried a little and had meetings with, you know, a lot of the shops that people would be familiar with here in Calgary. I think something that was unique about our last two rounds, where we did get, like, you know, outside the friends and family circle was that both rounds were sort of spearheaded by lawyers on the platform.

[00:39:26] Jeff Adamson: Oh, right on.

[00:39:28] Brett Colvin: So that was kind of how we kicked off both rounds. And, if I'm just being frank, the venture folks in Canada that we spoke with, like, either they didn't see how we could disrupt and change law because they have so much interaction like, they're so close to the problem we're solving, it's like, they're almost too close to see how it could be different, and it's been working okay for them. And our valuation was too spicy.

[00:39:54] Jeff Adamson: Right.

[00:39:55] Brett Colvin: That was another piece. You know, we had a bunch of committed capital at a valuation that, you know, I think at the time was certainly, like, in the range. And we were, you know, I think, very thoughtful and strategic about how we priced ourselves, but ultimately, we priced ourselves every round. And so it was a different dynamic than I think most of the fundraisers are where the startup’s waiting for term sheets. We were bringing the term sheet and saying you know, making it very binary. You know, for better and for worse, we did, you know, a little bit more of an ad hoc and less of a traditional institutional sort of preseed and seed round, but I think I was also able to maintain at the governance level complete control over Goodlawyer. And, you know, I think we're well placed to go more of that institutional route when we, you know, start thinking about a Series A.

And it was also you know, I think one of the cool things about the city we're in right now, Calgary, is there are a lot of folks with money on the sidelines that can be drawn into a good story and, you know, a good sort of vision on where you can take a company, and I think we took advantage of that sort of [a] little bit of a cowboy approach to raising our initial capital.

[00:41:16] Jeff Adamson: So where should people go and find you? Is it goodlawyer.ca? Is it goodlawyer.ai?

[00:41:20] Brett Colvin: Yeah, you can check us out online at goodlawyer.ca, and best place to reach out to me is on LinkedIn.

[00:41:28] Jeff Adamson: And that means if you're a lawyer, that means if you're a business, and that means if you're a consumer, anyone who really needs anything kind of related to law.

[00:41:37] Brett Colvin: Anybody that's tired with the status quo, as far as it goes with big corporate firms, whether they're working for them or being serviced by them, we play super nice with them too, because we're trying to fill a gap. And so for anybody listening that knows a good lawyer or knows a good business that would like to test the waters with something new. Reach out.

[00:42:00] Jeff Adamson: Awesome, man. Well, we're big fans of what you guys are doing, big champions cheering you guys on, and appreciate you taking the time to come by.

[00:42:05] Brett Colvin: Appreciate that, man. And, you know, final thing [that] I'll say is, love what you guys are doing and appreciate what Neo has done already to put Calgary on the global startup map. You guys are changing the dynamic of the city I think more than probably anybody else right now, and just keep it up man.

[00:42:31] Jeff Adamson: Thank you for tuning in to Behind the Brand. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you’re interested in learning more about Neo Financial, visit us at neofinancial.com.

Behind the Brand is a production of Neo Financial and MediaLab YYC. Hosted by Jeff Adamson. Strategy, research, and production by Keegan Sharp, Alana Tefledzuk, and Kyle Marshall.