Entrepreneurship and leadership as a lawyer with Somya Kaushik

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Hello everyone. Welcome to another amazing episode of the Dominate Law Podcast show. This is Nen, your host. This is the place where lawyers come to learn about how to create a bigger future in terms of time, money, purpose, and relationships. Today I have a unique guest, a different guest than the typical guest I have on the show. Uh, my guest today is Somia kic. She's a recent grad. Uh, she graduated, graduated in 2013. But the reason I wanted her on the show is because she has a very unique background. She's one of those people who saw law as, uh, not the ending itself, but rather part of her journey. So she went into law, she saw opportunities or problems, however you wanna frame it, and then decided to take the bull by the horn and start solving it. So even though she serves lawyers, and she works with lawyers a lot, she's really trying to help lawyers, she's trying to kind of solve a problem and, and think in different ways on how she can be of service to lawyers. So, Somia, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Thank you. So what inspired you to, you know, start Ask me eq.me.

Yeah, I, well, I was working at a law firm in New York. Um, I was working in a small law firm, and we were working as a general practice. So we were getting cases in different areas of the law, and we're not really willing to turn down cases and figured we could learn it, we could represent them. Um, and so we were getting cases from, you know, criminal defense cases to commercial cases, and we were taking them in, but we were producing slowly. And the reason we were producing slowly was because we were doing a lot of the research and the writing from scratch. You know, one example is we had one week where I had a, a trademark case a second week where I had a political asylum petition, and the third week where I had, um, a scaffolding issue. So someone had fallen off a scaffolding or a scaffold.

So, um, you know, those three areas of law really have nothing to do with one another, and there's very little overlap, if at all. So I was the one, as the young associate to do all the research from scratch, do all the writing from scratch. Um, and I just realized we were wasting a lot of the firm's time and a lot of the firm's money at that point, small businesses, even now, we just don't have the resources and even the manpower to, to get that type of work product out in an efficient manner. And every, every cost is important in a small business. And at that time, Lexus or Westlaw that we were using to go out of our plan to look for templates, but not just forms, but substantive memos or motions. We were paying $64 a minute. Now that is, you know, an, an incredible amount of money when you're, especially when you're starting something from scratch.

So we were really ma wasting money. Our margins were terrible as a business. So I figured there's gotta be a better way to practice. This is really inefficient. It doesn't make any sense. We're losing a lot of money. Our clients are unhappy. We can't deliver on the right timelines. And, you know, I did a little bit of market research and realized that a lot, lot of solos and small firms were going through this problem. So that's really where the inception of ESC Me came about, where I realized that there should be a marketplace where lawyers can sign on and trust that they're gonna find other lawyers, work product documents, motions, contracts, pleadings, whatever it may be from transactional to litigation, but they'd be able to sign on and know that they were able to connect with a marketplace and a network of other attorneys where they could download and buy their work product. So they weren't starting from a blank word document, they weren't starting from scratch, but they had something they could use and to save their time and money. So SME really started because I had that experience myself. And in 2014, I created Esme just for the New York market.

Makes sense. So you saw a problem and uh, you turned it into an opportunity. That's what entrepreneurs do. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. The problem is, you know, why rain when the wheel again and again and again because you're not the first person to, you know, uh, represent a client who fell off the roof. You know, probably a few other people have done that before you, so why do you have to be the one who kind of starts from scratch and figures all of this stuff out to fair question? You know, it doesn't make any sense to continue re it's like, you know, reinventing the wheel every single day. It's stupid.

Exactly.

So that's awesome. Um, but it comes down to, um, you know, mindsets, right? Um, you know, like you're talking about a growth mindset. You're talking about, you know, let's work together and collaborate together. Mindset. But a lot of lawyers, you know, I've heard people proudly say, I've done 25,000 cases and I've won 95% of them. This idea of, you know, winning and losing, you know, I don't wanna say that winning and losing is scarcity mindset, but usually in the scarcity world, somebody wins and somebody loses. Um, so you see that, um, kind of a dichotomy there. And on, on the other hand, lawyers refer to each other, so they're very comfortable, you know, referring back and forth clients and, you know, really collaborating. So, um, and also the concept of value, right? Because I'm thinking, Hey, I spent so much time doing this, why would I sell this to somebody else for one 10th of that? You know, I could get paid, you know, full price, and this is how much that's worth. So you're dealing with a lot of, uh, you know, habits, mindsets.

Absolutely. You know, it's been, the biggest challenge, I think, is that four years ago when I started, the market just wasn't ripe like it is today. And that is due to mainly what I, I would, I think is, like you said, the psychological and habitual way of practicing law. You know, um, for one, younger lawyers now are graduating, they're more comfortable and confident branching off on their own earlier. They're technologically savvy, they're primed for technology and efficiency. So now we see a shift in the legal industry from lawyers who were at one point, very risk averse, technology averse. It wasn't part of their daily practice. You know, we were really pen and paper and books at one point. So it's shifting the way we practice from a, a, an actual psychological standpoint where we're not doing things with pen and paper, but we're changing and incorporating technology to make our life easier.

That's a shift in mentality. And the other shift in mentality is what you sort of touched upon was the idea of moving from an individualistic and competitive industry towards a collaborative practice of law. And I am a firm believer that in five years and 10 years, we're gonna see that the law practice itself is a collaborative and somewhat uniform practice, because we're seeing the shift in the younger generation, we're seeing the incorporation of technology. And so, um, that we've already, I've even seen in the past four years of Esme that we started off with an uphill battle, really convincing people, Hey, here's, here's a marketplace where you can get information that you need for the average document price on Esme is $37. So you can get something to help your practice, and you can also sell your motion or your pleadings or whatever it is that you have.

And yes, a lot of attorneys in the beginning were very prideful and very, you know, they weren't willing to even understand the idea or the capacity that they could have on Esme. So, um, now they're sort of understanding that I can price my document anywhere between $5 and 500. So if you do feel like your document is valued, and you've put a lot of time and effort, which most people probably do, you have a, a capability of making 200, $300 on a document that you're not able to most likely rebill, um, for, for another client that comes in. So you're sitting there, you have your desktop, you've got these documents that are somewhat exhaustive, and we are giving you a marketplace where you can put them on there, drag and drop them onto your profile, price them accordingly, and just sell them continuously to other lawyers. So you not only make money, but you also get the exposure as an expert in some field.

Right, right. Do you see this mindset shifting? I mean, like in a, in a, pretty much with all the younger lawyers are much more interested in collaboration as opposed to competition? Or do you see that slowly shifting? Like, I'm just wondering.

I think it's slowly shifting. You know, the legal world is so divided between small law and big law. So I can't speak for big law, I haven't practiced in that arena, but I can say for small firms and solos, it's, there is a collaborative portion of the practice, but it was in like a listserv, you know, an email listserv that was pretty archaic. You would just send out an email to this, let's say personal injury, plaintiff listserv in New York, and you would ask, Hey, does somebody have, you know, such and such motion? And you would just sort of hope that someone on there would one, respond, two would have the document you're looking for, and three, be willing to give that to you with no quid pro quo. And that was never the case. There was always some sort of quid pro quo. It was either you're gonna refer me cases or you're gonna give me something back. So the idea of sharing has always sort of existed. It just was not common and it wasn't formalized or monetized. So it's, it exists, uh, at a very minute level in a practice, but, and ESMI is sort of taking that and highlighting that practice of collaboration and formalizing it.

Right. Right. Can you talk about some of the early challenges, um, you know, the first few years when you launched it? Like what kind of traction did you get? Because the reason I want to talk about this is, um, you know, being an entrepreneur is hard and, uh, and a lot of times things don't work out in the first or second or even the third or fourth try. So I would love to kind of know the first two years, like if you can paint a picture, you know, what happened, you know, how much revenue the business made and, you know, any kind of metric and any kind of details would be awesome. Just the first phase of your business.

Yeah, I mean, I think the listeners should know that. Um, I have no, I don't have a technolo technology background. Um, you know, my, my background was in IP and, um, so jumping into something, especially a tech startup, was totally new for me. It was a risky kind of decision, but I felt that there was such a need and I, I could formulate enough of an idea and a roadmap for it that I just jumped in and I decided that I was going to try this and put together a beta version and just test the market with it. And I did a lot of reading, I did a lot of experimental, you know, processes throughout the way. But I think the biggest challenges were understanding the market, understanding the market in not just a, a numbers way. You know, you can do a lot of research, you can take a lot of surveys, um, but really understanding the type of people that you're dealing with, understanding that the, the way to sell, how to sell, how to market from digital marketing to in-person market, in-person marketing.

You know, I think gaining knowledge and learning as an entrepreneur is the first and foremost important thing. And it may be undervalued. Many entrepreneurs look at, I have a great idea, so it should be successful. But I think as an entrepreneur, especially without the background in which you're really trying to dive into, it's important to gain as much experience and knowledge first so that you're not making mistakes so that you're, or at least you're mitigating mistakes as much as you can. Um, so one experience, one challenge was definitely learning as much as I could. Um, and it, the learning curve in the first two years was just extremely steep. And I enjoyed it though. Um, I feel like now four or five years out, I really have sort of a grasp of some of the different areas that an entrepreneur needs to be an expert in to run a business.

And, you know, the first two years I was still, I was in litigation full-time, so I was working at a firm and I was doing commercial, commercial litigation and some criminal defense pro bono for the most part. And so my full-time job was in litigation, and I really did not tend to towards Esme as much as I probably should have, but it also wasn't picking up traction the way I hoped. You know, I, I had the idea, but other people just didn't, weren't ready. The market was not ready for it. They were not, um, they understood the concept theoretically, but practically speaking, they were not ready to implement it. So the first two years were difficult in a sense, from an individual standpoint, learning, uh, about the business in every facet, and then also learning how to take the failures, understanding that my idea may be great to me, but if it's not what these people who I'm trying to cater to want, you can't be married to the idea. You have to be flexible, and you also have to be patient in the sense that timing is really important in anything, especially in business. And so, you know, learning to just kind of go through the ups and downs and the failures, so to speak, um, was that challenge. And then the other challenge was figuring out maneuvering and navigating through the development side, picking developers, outsourcing developers versus in-house development, um, navigating those types of things in the business and surely making mistakes along the way.

Right, right. Um, and, and you take a transaction fee. Is that, is that the business model?

Yeah, we're, we've always been a free platform. Um, it's just the only requirement is that you're a practicing lawyer in good standing in the United States, we approve each lawyer based on their attorney registration number with the bar association that they are admitted into, and we take a transaction fee of any transaction that takes place on the marketplace. So, um, right now we're opened up, opened only for lawyers, and we hope that in the near future kind of expand our services to other people as well.

That makes sense. Um, so when you relaunched the business, what was, um, what were the biggest aha moments you had, um, and what did you do differently as part of the relaunch?

Yeah, so like I said, I was practicing as a litigator for, uh, up until very recently. And in towards the end of 2016, we got a lot of interest from lawyers across the country, solos from Florida and California and Texas. They had emailed me and they said, Hey, we came across Esme and we really liked the idea, but it's only for New York lawyers. So I started really kind of, the gear started turning again in my head, and I realized that maybe the time is right now and, and the market is ready for this collaborative marketplace. So I quit my league, my law firm job, and I decided that I was gonna take the second attempt at Esme and revamp the business, revamp the branding, and, um, make it a national platform so that I could get the interest from the people who were actually interested.

And so I quit my job. I, you know, did a lot of research in bringing a developer and a CTO into ask me. So that was one of the biggest aha moments for me is like outsourcing works for a lot of people. Outsourcing my development the first time around just did not work for me. It was because my first time doing it, I really needed a team mentality for my developers. I needed people to also have the same vision and the same work ethic as well as the same drive to take the idea from abstract to concrete. And with the outsource developers that I had, I just felt like I wasn't getting any guidance from them either, and it wasn't really a team working towards the same goal. So when I brought my now co-founder and CTO Ames Kaur on board, it was such a game changer. It really made everything, um, kind of fit and come together. And he's been great in revamping the whole website. So that was one aha moment, but, you know, I can't say that that's for everybody. That was definitely my experience. So bringing bringing a niche on board was a really important move for the relaunch. Did you,

Did you like, um, get investors involved at this point? Or was it pretty much you and your co-founder self-funding?

Yeah, you know, I, we've been self-funding ever since, you know, we were open to the idea of raising capital at one point. Self-funding is hard, as any entrepreneur knows. And, um, but I was really just trying to do as much as I could on my own before we really had a need for raising capital and bringing investors in. And that also has been sort of an uphill battle when we were looking for it somewhat casually. We, we got people who were interested, but very, uh, sort of risk averse in investing in the legal space. But that was, but times have changed now and, and it's only been maybe two or three years, but now I think investors are really understanding how big the legal market is and how that, that's sort of the next boom for technology because there is so much to be done in the practice of law with technology,

The co-founder. How did you find your co-founder? Any tips on that?

That was hard. You know, <laugh>, it was hard because I was not in a network of engineers and developers, and so I used a lot of different platforms that, you know, would have recommendations for putting founders together with co-founders. I did a lot of networking events in New York, and ultimately I was referred to a niche through a friend. So it just worked that I had tried all sorts of ways. And then ultimately it was, um, a friend that referred me to him.

Right. A lot of people have conflicts with their co-founders, like, um, any tips on that? Like, uh, both in terms of picking a co-founder as well as in terms of, you know, working with somebody? How long have you, you and your co-founder been working together now,

Now about two and a half years. Two

Years. Oh, so before he even came on board or before you decided to go full-time, you and him were working together on the relaunch?

Yeah.

Okay, got it. Yeah. So my question is, you know, any tips on how to find the right person you would get along with? And then how do you maximize the chances of getting along? And then

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I had, um, I ideas for business partners before Amish and, you know, great people, some of them friends, but it just didn't work, um, because it's a hard thing to pick, you know, it's a, it's a person that you have to really trust, and especially if you have different domain expertise, you really have to let go of a little bit of the control and trust that hey, this person knows what they're doing and they're gonna get what they need to do done and effectively and efficiently. Um, so I actually wrote an article about this, and it's on my LinkedIn profile if anyone would be interested, but it's, um, called the Sixth Truths About Entrepreneurship being a first time entrepreneur, Uhhuh <affirmative>. And one of them is exactly about how I went about picking a business partner the second time around when I realized, uh, all the aha moments.

And I actually recommend, which worked really well, uh, to before you decide on a business partner. And if you have a couple of people in mind, ask them to both of you to sit down and do a sort of like a blind business plan in the sense that, you know, the concept, the business idea, and both of you don't talk too much about it. You both separately write your own business plan. You know, it doesn't have to be 10, 20 pages, but it can be a significant amount of, of roadmap and where you see the business going, how you wanna get there, um, what type of role you would wanna have in it. And so just a business plan. And then you sit down together once you both have made it separately and you really line them up and you match where you guys, um, agree and where you guys differ, and then you figure out if those differences are really something that's gonna be a problem in the partnership, or if that's going to be something that might even be an asset that, hey, this person's providing a very different vision and a very different perspective.

But I like it. So I, I actually suggest doing a blind business plan.

Makes sense. Um, any other tips you would recommend, um, if a lawyer is thinking of doing his or her own thing in terms of, you know, outside of being, you know, creating their own law practice, their, any, any, any advice, any thoughts, any lessons learned that you would like to leave us with before we wrap this up?

I would say you will not know everything until you do it. And as lawyers, we are sort of primed to analyze all the risks at the moment, future risks, and understanding how to mitigate those future risks. So we tend to have a risk averse mentality towards business or making or taking decisions that we are outside or, or outside of our comfort zone. And like I said before, I didn't have a background in business, I didn't have a background in tech. Um, but I did have the experience as a lawyer and I just trusted my skills as a lawyer that I would be able to analyze effectively any situation problem that came my way, whether that was in accounting or that was in the digital marketing world. You know, I would just, there was no way for me to be comfortable and then say, Hey, I'm gonna start this business. It was always sort of uncomfortable to just jump into something. But you, you just have to do it. If you have an idea and you don't necessarily have the expertise in every facet of it, you're never gonna have an expertise in every facet of it. So you just have to do it.

So your advice is just jump in, just do it.

Like jump in, obviously do research as much as you can and understand market research is really important. And I think networking, the big, one of the biggest changes, um, I felt was that in the legal world, and that's shifting, but in the legal world, it was very individualistic and competitive. And in the entrepreneurial world, which is not a highly regulated professional industry, it is a world of sharing, collaboration, helping other people. So when I started really networking before launching the idea of Esme, I went to a lot of meetups. I talked to a lot of people who had founded companies before. I really just talked to a lot of people and everyone was very helpful. Everyone was ready and like willing to introduce me to another person. And I built my network in the entrepreneurial world in New York. And that gave me a lot of confidence that I was understanding what does it mean to be an entrepreneur? What am I getting myself into? How much do I need to learn about my market before I jump in? So I think people should be prepared that it's a pleasant sur surprise to change from the legal to entrepreneurial world. You'll get a lot of help and you'll get a lot of guidance from people who've done it before.

Right. If people wanna follow you, um, Somia, how can they do that?

Um, we,

Or they won't even reach out to you if, if you are willing to talk to them and kind of ask

Yeah, of course. I, well we're on social media, so you can find us at Esme E-S-Q-M-E and then, um, if you want to send me an email, you can send us an email at info@sqme.com.

Do you mind if we include all of your contact details, um, along with the podcast, so if people wanna reach out, they can easily find it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you very much for your time today. I really appreciate it and I think you're doing something, uh, a lot of people don't have the guts to do, and I applaud you for it because being an entrepreneur is not easy.

Thank

You. And, and especially, uh, you know, convincing lawyers who typically don't like change <laugh>, or at least not the ones who jump at change, you know? Yeah. They're kind of a little bit slow and they take their time to think things through. It is, it is, you know, commendable and I think being a lawyer yourself really, you know, uh, not taking no for an answer and sticking with it is, is awesome.

Um, thank you so much. Yeah. Um, we're hoping eventually, um, expand asking me from the states to Canada and, um, you know, couple years down the road, hopefully be the main marketplace for lawyers.

Yeah. I mean, that, that's a good thing about when you start something new, like you own this space. If nobody, if you're the first one to do it, it's really hard for somebody to come and catch up. Yeah.

It's been a great experience and, and with that token, it's been difficult too because like if you, if you're paving your own way, it's not smooth and yeah. Lots of ups and downs, but that's, that's part of the process and it's, if you can find, um, if you can be happy with that ups and downs and you can learn to enjoy it, I think that's the best place to be.

Yeah. If you can make failure your friend, that's a great place to be.

Exactly.

Yeah. As long as you don't look at it as a failure, you look at it as an opportunity to learn and grow and continue to learn and grow. So, uh, but it's easier said than done though, because you're in the middle of it. <laugh>.

Definitely. Yeah. So

It's like, uh, going through a divorce and saying, well, it's okay. <laugh>

<laugh>. Yeah. But, you know, and, and I think that's why people are a lot really risk averse to, you know, they have great ideas, but just don't know where to start or how to start and what are, you know, it just seems like a risk, more of a risk than, um, an experience to some people. And, but there are many considerations to take when you're jumping into something new. Um, obviously being in the right place, in the right time in your life and, um, being able to, to take the time to start your own thing because the first couple years are all really hard.

Right. Thank you very much, Samia. I really appreciate your time and I want to thank the listeners as well for giving us their time. Uh, if you love the podcast, please feel free to share it on social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, you name it. Uh, you can also write a review for us, download it on iTunes. Um, go to the website, dominate law.com. Lots of ways to share and share your thoughts. Thank you everyone for listening, and thank you Samia, for sharing your wisdom with us today. Have a wonderful day. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye for now.

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