Adrienne Fischer on Building a Business-Friendly Legal Practice

Thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely. So I actually started when I came out of law school. I started in the litigation realm and I quickly realised that it wasn’t my forte. Uh, it just, it wasn’t, it didn’t suit my personality.

And, um, there were just a whole host of reasons, but my husband and I relocated from Los Angeles to Denver in 2015. And I decided to completely flip my practice. I really wanted to help businesses be proactive with their legal journeys because I had been in the courtroom and kind of seen where things had been going wrong. And so, um, flipped my practice, moved to Denver and started Basecamp Legal. And we really aim to keep our clients out of the courtroom.

Sure. So we are a small but mighty firm. I like to say we’re small and scrappy. We help startups in the outdoor and tech industries and We help from formation. So starting your company to contracts to, if you’ve got a website, um, you know, privacy policies, terms and conditions.We do some employment side counts, employer side counselling. So helping you bring on those people when you’re expanding your company to hire. Uh, we also do fundraising. So if you are looking to raise money through a series seed or a series, we have a securities attorney that can help you do that compliantly and we also do, uh, intellectual property work in the realm of trademarks and, uh, copyrights. So lots of diverse practice areas. We’re a small team, but everybody’s got their sandbox that they like to play in. And we really try to help our clients, um, through all phases of their business.

Yeah.

So I would say most of our attorneys have more than a decade of experience under their belts. So we’ve seen a lot in that time, and then also we’re very approachable. We really pride ourselves on being involved in the community and active in the, um, lots of programming around Denver startup week around startups in general. And so our. We want our clients to feel that we’re not that white shoe stuffy law firm that you go to Um, you know and you feel like you’re nervous about talking to an attorney. I think a lot of people find lawyers intimidating Uh, so we really pride ourselves on being approachable.

Yes. I mean, we leverage technology in ways that will make us more efficient, but we really pride ourselves on that human touch and EQ, which can often be overlooked in this process. You know, when you come to a lawyer, you’re going to share. As you say, some very personal things and it has to be a very open, honest relationship so we can help mitigate risks. If something does come up, you know, if there’s a sensitive employment issue, maybe a manager didn’t do something correctly, or maybe, you know, you didn’t get, we have co founders who sometimes aren’t on the same page, you know, in terms of starting the business, they have to be able to communicate that with us. Well, and have that open dialogue.

So a couple of ways. We find most of our clients through word of mouth, right? So, you know, we’ve got a good reputation in Denver. We’re very active, as I said, in the community. Um, we engage with I would say power partners, you know, in terms of financial advisors and things like that to help grow our network, um, and being social both in person and online. Uh, we also started a sister company called Contract Llama because we’re aiming to provide some of that legal education as well as some contract templates, um, in a manner that Is more affordable because some people don’t can’t afford legal or don’t want necessarily want to engage legal and they need it until they need it, or they always need it earlier than they think they need it. But, you know, it’s trying to help on the education piece. So we’re going to be doing a lot of educational videos. There’s already one out there. That’s like a legal trail guide to try to help people understand what they should be looking for, on the legal side as they start that business. So we found, you know, that the education component is super helpful.

So I like to say I’m building a business the same way my clients are building a business and there’s definitely that, um, sense of camaraderie I have with them on this journey because I’ve been, our law firm is eight years old now and so, um, The first five years was really, uh, finding people that I could trust to help me grow organically. I think a lot of people want to grow and scale quickly. Um, and it’s, it’s really oftentimes better to take that step back and really be mindful. Like, I know that I do not want to be some midsize or larger firm. You know, we really want to keep our team tight knit Uh, and, and really focus on excellent client delivery.

So that mindful growth and, and keeping in mind that I have to remind myself that success is differently defined for everybody, right?

So I, I may not, you know, it’s hard in today’s world cause I feel like we do chase success. The, the dollars and cents, and, and there’s a lot of incentive to, with inflation to raise prices or, or do those things and what we really pride ourselves on is our, our attorneys have really excellent work life balance. Um, I have an associate who works from her sailboat and, just for part of the year for a couple months. Um, I have other associates who like to be outside and they’re on volunteer ski patrol. And so, you know, having something outside of the workplace has been huge and keeping in mind that that can be successful too.

100%. Thank you. And fun to learn that that’s, you know, you can treat people differently. If you treat people as adults and set expectations appropriately, it can really be a mutually beneficial relationship.

Yeah. So I see potentially building kind of a twin pillar with the education for entrepreneurs and startups. Um, as far part of an education arm, we really, you know, we see, you know, We have a lot of data and experience as to where businesses get flat footed with legal. And so we really want to start pushing that education to help people understand where they can mitigate their risks early on and save themselves, um, money and effort and, and stress. So I see building up the education arm. Part of it. And I also see, um, continuing to, I don’t think we’re going to add too much more to our staff. We really want to focus on providing our clients the best service that we can possibly provide and keep that sanity and work life balance to a certain degree.

Of course. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.