For a long time, I’ve considered podcasting as a new venture. But time and fear have always served as an impediment. Since I’ve been working from home under social distancing protocols, I’ve had some time and flexibility in my schedule that I didn’t have before. So I set aside my fears and set about launching the Lawyerpreneur Podcast.

You can listen here or on your favorite podcast apps: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and RSS.

Launching the Lawyerpreneur Podcast

Having an entrepreneurial spirit helps us fill our creative wells and excel in our work, because being a lawyer doesn’t have to mean doing business as usual. 

There are four alternate paths that allow lawyers to engage their entrepreneurial spirits and distinguish themselves from others:

1. The lawyer who creates an entrepreneurial practice; 
2. The lawyer who engages in practice-adjacent entrepreneurialism;
3. The lawyer who creates a side hustle as an additional income stream; and
4. The lawyer-entrepreneur whose entrepreneurialism is a pathway out of law practice.

These are the things I’m going to talk about with lawyer entrepreneurs to give us insights, tips, and inspiration for invoking our inner entrepreneurs and having the gumption to achieve our ambitions.

Transcript of Episode 1

Welcome to the Lawyerpreneur Podcast, where we explore how having an entrepreneurial spirit helps us fill our creative wells and excel in our work, because being a lawyer doesn’t have to mean doing business as usual. I’m your host, Jeremy Richter.

Since this is the inaugural show I want to share with you the premise behind the show. There are four alternate paths that allow lawyers to engage their entrepreneurial spirits and distinguish themselves from others.

First, there is the lawyer who creates an entrepreneurial practice.

This is someone who finds a gap in the market to fill or who finds a new way to meet clients where they’re at and speak their language. Examples of this are plaintiffs’ lawyers who have launched big marketing campaigns in areas that were previously underserved. Creators of virtual law firms that have partners all over the country, but very little in the way of overhead. And lawyers who have sought out niche practice areas or particular clientele.

Second is the lawyer who engages in practice-adjacent entrepreneurialism.

This is someone who has created a platform that makes him readily identifiable to clients and helps others to find him. This is the approach I took when I started my law blog in 2016. I was in a crowded insurance defense market, a young lawyer with little in the way of a client base. And so to distinguish myself, I created a law blog where I started out discussing recent developments in Alabama insurance defense work. Eventually, my readership changed from what I expected it to be, or I guess it never changed – it was different from what I expected it to be. Where I thought it might be insurance-related people, it ended up being lawyers.

And so I changed what I was writing about to something that was more interesting to me than developments in case law. I began writing about law practice management, case management, client relationships and things that were of interest to me as I was a growing and developing young lawyer and things that I needed to improve on. So I wanted to share my experiences with others who might be dealing with the same issues. This led me to me, all sorts of new people, to get engaged in new communities in ways that I hadn’t before. It led to opportunities to meet other lawyers who could refer business to me and to potential clients and actual clients that turned into business. So I created a law-adjacent platform that lead to new business opportunities.

Third is the lawyer who creates a side hustle as an additional income stream.

In this category, there are two types of side hustles that I’ll be talking about and interviewing other lawyers about. There is law-adjacent work that is tangentially related to law and lawyers, and other work like gig economy jobs and traditional businesses that are not related to law practice. These are lawyers who have created new revenue streams that are not intended to advance their law practice and don’t in any way relate to their law practice. Maybe their work is something that they would eventually like to transition to full time. Or maybe it’s just something to express their creativity and supplement their income.

Fourth is the lawyer entrepreneur whose entrepreneurialism is a pathway out of the practice of law.

Again, I’ve subdivided this into two categories. Those who have formed businesses within the legal marketplace – think of legal tech or consulting – and those whose new businesses have taken them out of the legal sector altogether.

Maybe none of these four categories describes you yet, but you aspire for them to. Or you just need some inspiration. This podcast is for you. And it’s for me, because one of my purposes in writing books and creating revenue streams is to both supplement my current income and create intellectual property that will continue to produce income long after I’ve put in the work. So join me on the Lawyerpreneur Podcast as we talk to other lawyer entrepreneurs who have engaged their creativity both within and outside of their law practices, because they realized that being a lawyer doesn’t mean doing business as usual.

If you’ve enjoyed the show, you can support it by rating it on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is you’re listening. And make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss anything. You can also support the show on Patreon to help pay for the hosting and transcription costs associated with the show. Make sure to tune in soon for our first interview with tax lawyer Steven Chung.