🔒Rewriting the rulebook: Law-related business ventures are taking off in Maine

Gone are the days when a law school graduate would spend a career at a single law firm or in a corporate legal department until retirement. Owing in large part to technology that accelerated during the pandemic, a growing number of lawyers are leaving established practices and steady salaries to venture out on their own.

In Maine, new law-related businesses range from niche practices with clients in multiple states to disruptive technology startups.

Non-lawyers are also getting in on the game, including the developers of a platform to guide users through contracts and agreements without initial assistance from an attorney charging by the hour. While attorneys are still needed, the ability to work remotely opens doors for those wanting to stretch their entrepreneurial muscles beyond building a client base for an employer.

“Technology has certainly enabled people to practice law differently,” observes Jonathan Dunitz, president of the Maine State Bar Association. Thinking back to the start of his own career in 1993, he doesn’t recall even having a computer on his desk. At Verrill Dana for more than a decade, he is an attorney in Portland firm’s energy, insurance coverage and litigation groups

“The law firm model doesn’t work for everybody, but some people dealt with it because it was the best model there was,” Dunitz says. “Now they have more options.”

Brief platform’s ‘sweet spot’

Similar to how financial technology startups are disrupting the banking sector, hundreds of legal technology or “lawtech” startups are changing the way legal services are delivered. AGC Partners says that market could reach more than $16 billion.

As the international investment bank predicts industry-wide consolidation and later-stage growth financing, new ventures are spreading their wings on Maine soil.

They include Brief, a platform founded last year by Diana Tan and Andrew Wu. The startup is among 10 in the Founder Residency cohort at Northeastern University’s Roux Institute in Portland. (The year-long program is designed for early-stage tech startups and focuses on supporting women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals and other historically marginalized groups.)

The two have been friends since their undergraduate studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, where the non-business majors entered a business-pitch competition on a whim, crammed the night before and ended up winning – though they chose not to go ahead with the business.

Tan, a Seattle resident who went on to get an MBA from the University of Chicago, worked in product development at Amazon while Wu is based in San Jose, Calif., and built technology at oddFlex Games Inc., a sports betting application, before they joined forces to start Brief in July 2023. (She’s the company’s CEO, while he’s chief technology officer.)

The web-based platform is designed to steer users through contracts before signing them, flagging any rate traps, hidden fees, ambiguous clauses and other potential problem areas.

“We provide the tools to help you make your own decision,” Tan explains during an interview at the Roux, a couple weeks into her year-long residency. “We’re a self-help tool designed to save users money so they can then put more targeted questions to lawyers instead of paying more than they need to up front.”

“We still advise everybody to go see an attorney — and a lot of the contracts will flow through a compliance or general counsel at the end anyway,” she says. “We’re just facilitating and augmenting that process.” Currently in beta testing, Brief is gearing up for a full commercial launch next year after raising more than $750,000 from angel and institutional investors.

Santiago Zindel, director of the Roux Institute’s Founder Residency, sees the early-stage capital as a “sign of traction” for the startup.

“Brief is right in the sweet spot,” he says. “They’ve raised early money but are still developing their product and finding product markets.”

ClaimData’s ‘wild ride’

Elsewhere in Maine, Jason Heinze founded a platform called ClaimData in early 2023 to help disability lawyers win injury and disability claims on behalf of their clients.

Based in the Androscoggin County town of Wales, Heinze is a former disability lawyer who previously urged his own clients to keep daily journals of their pain and symptoms that he would compile and submit to judges adjudicating claims.

In an effort automate the data entry that his clients were doing manually, he searched in vain for an app before deciding to launch his own with investment from a fellow attorney.

Today, 21 disability law firms in 10 states — and 115 of their clients — are using Heinze’s pain journal software. Clients receive daily prompts to report the real impact of their injury or illness, which are then summarized in a concise report designed to bolster their case.

Subscribers pay a monthly fee pegged to the number of clients using the platform, though Heinze is looking at other pricing models. He works with a software developer based in Concord, N.H.

Still new to technology and business ownership himself, the 2015 University of Maine School of Law alumnus says the first six months were quite an adjustment.

“I truly didn’t even know what I didn’t know,” he says. “Going to law school did not prepare me for operating this type of business. It’s been a wild ride.”

Heinze has reinvented himself professionally more than once, having worked as an architectural designer for four years with the intention of becoming an architect. He went to law school instead before getting his architecture license.

After graduating, he became a disability lawyer to help people at the worst times of their life and hopes this will be his last career transformation.

“Making the transition from lawyer to tech entrepreneur was way outside my comfort zone,” he concedes, “but now I’m starting to feel like things are coalescing.”

Declaring independence

Earlier this year, Kai McGintee and Amanda Norris Ames left Bernstein Shur’s investigations and resolutions practice group, which they co-chaired, to start Aleta Law. They were joined by eight attorneys and three staff members, all formerly with Bernstein Shur.

“It really made sense to operate independently since we’re not providing traditional legal services for our clients,” McGintee told Mainebiz at the time.

Aleta Law, whose name is derived from Aletheia, the Greek goddess of truth, is a boutique law firm in a specialized niche.

The firm provides investigation and adjudication services for colleges and universities, K-12 schools, sports organizations, nonprofits and private companies around the country when they deal with allegations involving sexual misconduct, intimate partner violence, stalking, discrimination and harassment, hazing, bullying and other forms of misconduct.

“Our clients were really thrilled that we were an independent boutique firm focused on investigations and hearings, and that we are neutral and not connected to a larger law firm that represents clients in different capacities,” McGintee says. “Without needing to do much marketing around Aleta, we’ve gotten a lot of new clients.”

She also says that the firm’s rates are lower than many of its competitors at large law firms.

In less than a year, the firm has grown to 16 staff members spread across six states; all receive paid sick leave cell phone reimbursement and other benefits.

“Operating virtually has allowed us a lot more flexibility in terms of hiring and allowed us to get hires that maybe we would not otherwise if we were a regional firm,” McGintee notes. “It gives us the ability to attract people who want to be working in remote environment.”

While everyone works from home, they will often use conferences to meet up with each other — including recently in Philadelphia and Burlington, Vt. — and gathered for a three-day summer retreat in Maine for strategic planning and team building.

While building up her own business, McGintee gets regular calls from other lawyers interested in making a similar move from employee to entrepreneur.

“I am seeing more lawyers leaving large firms to start their own firms in order to have the autonomy and flexibility to better serve their clients,” she says.

“I also think that advances in technology and lawyers’ experience of successfully working remotely during the pandemic has shown innovative lawyers that, in many industries, it’s possible to break out of the traditional large law firm model,” says Ames. “This shift provides benefits to both clients and lawyers.”

Krystal Williams, also formerly with Bernstein Shur, has also opted to go independent. She aims to offer business clients affordable legal services via a subscription-based model and access a document library that’s she’s creating.

While Williams named her company Providentia for the Roman goddess of foresight and wisdom, she plans to change the name in coming months to honor her grandmothers.

“Both have shaped and inspired me my whole life, and as I thought about who I want to be in the world, I’m inspired by the role models they were to me,” says Williams, who was honored as a Mainebiz Woman to Watch in 2021.

Satisfying ‘gig’

It’s not just younger lawyers who are striking out on their own.

So has 67-year-old Scott Maker, who has carved out a new career for himself mediating insurance-related business disputes after retiring from Unum in 2020 after 24 years with the disability insurer and group benefits provider.

Nine months after leaving Unum, he teamed up with Greg Woodworth — a former senior vice president and general counsel at National Life Group – to start WoodworthMaker LLC, a mediation and arbitration business with a nationwide clientele.

“Being my own boss is great,” says Maker, who started his career with a law firm in Washington, D.C., before joining Pierce Atwood as an associate in Portland in 1985; he became a litigation partner in 1992.

Now working from his home in Portland, he mediates disputes around life, health and disability matters at the request of both plaintiffs’ and defense attorneys. Most of his business comes from word of mouth, and he’s developed a nationwide practice.

“While I really enjoyed working in a large firm and at a large company, those jobs were much less entrepreneurial than my current job,” he tells Mainebiz from a Himalayan vacation in Bhutan. “It is very satisfying to start a business and watch it grow, knowing that its potential success is completely dependent on you.”

Maker also likes the freedom to set his own schedule, even if that means taking on a heavier workload for what he initially thought would be a part-time gig.

“Because I love what I do, however, it makes this work seem much more like a very fun hobby than a job, so it balances out in the end,” he says.

Of his younger peers hanging out a shingle earlier in their careers, he says, “They strike me as less risk-averse from a career perspective than lawyers who came before them and are looking for a series of legal experiences, rather than staying in one job or one firm their entire careers.”

Maker’s advice to today’s law school graduates with entrepreneurial ambitions: “Develop an area of expertise that will stand you apart is some way, hopefully in an area of the law that you’re passionate about.”