REVENUE DRIVEN FOR OUR CLIENTS
$500 million and countingIn this episode of Wytpod, host Stephen Bland sits down with business attorney Kate Kliebert from Charlotte, North Carolina. Kate shares her transition from big-firm litigation to founding her own practice focused on advisory services for rapidly growing local businesses. She discusses her client-friendly approach, offering flat fees and personalised counsel, and delves into her specialisation in contracts and data privacy. Kate also offers valuable advice for new attorneys and entrepreneurs, emphasising the importance of mentorship and following one’s own path.
Kliebert Law is a Charlotte-based firm specialising in business advisory services, contracts, and data privacy, offering client-friendly legal solutions to rapidly growing North Carolina businesses.
Hello everyone and welcome to our latest Wytpod. I’m Stephen Bland, your host with Wytlabs, a full service marketing agency. Today’s guest is Kate. Kate, feel free to introduce yourself and let our viewers know about your background.
Yeah, hey, thanks for having me, it’s Stephen. I am Kate Kliebert and I’m a business lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I work mostly with owners of quickly growing local businesses who need help figuring out the kind of the legal challenges that they’re facing as they get, you know, bigger clients, bigger deals and their business is growing. So that’s what I do.
Awesome. What inspired you to become a business attorney and have that all come to play?
Yeah, so I used to do something a bit different than I do now. I started my career working at a couple of bigger firms here in Charlotte doing mostly litigation. And there were some things I liked about that, some things I liked, not as much. And so when I decided to open my own firm and was deciding what I wanted to do, I really wanted to take more of that kind of counsellor advisory role.
I’m trying to help my clients avoid the problems that they were running into in litigation rather than being the person kind of coming in afterwards and trying to clean up a mess, you know, trying to help them make decisions along the way that will kind of mitigate their risk instead of, you know, making things that might get them into trouble later on.
Gotcha, I understand. Who is your ideal target audience for your firm?
So I work with, I tend to work with a lot of software companies or like digital marketing companies. I do some data privacy work, which is a little unique for people at smaller firms. And so people who have that need often find me that way and are a good fit for what I do. And then other than that, it’s, know, mostly, like I said, like privately owned companies that are local to North Carolina, they may work across the country or have a presence across the country, but they’re based here in North Carolina.
So most of your clients are in North Carolina? Most of them? all of them? almost at least based in North Carolina, okay. And you service the whole state or really just the Charlotte area?
Yes, yeah, most of them are state. It kind of depends on what they need. You know, a lot of the work that I do, can do virtually and don’t necessarily need to be near their office. So a lot of my clients are here locally just because that’s who I meet and tend to know, but they can be really anywhere across the state.
Awesome. What makes you different than some of your competitors?
Yeah. You know, I think I really try one of the things I did, think, you know, owning any type of business, but it’s a little bit of trial and error on what works for you and what works for your clients. And so, you know, one thing that I really try to do is kind of make the process of hiring a lawyer really easy and really client friendly in a way that I think some attorneys are starting more to do, but maybe not as many by offering flat fees for a lot of my services or monthly fees for people who need more recurring work to make that cost a little more predictable for them and try to really understand their business and the problems they might have with hiring a lawyer and do what I can to make that process a little easier and intimidating for them.
Gotcha. What is your most used service or if you want to talk about some of your other services, go ahead.
Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing I do is all sorts of contracts. So, you know, a lot of licensing agreements, data sharing agreements, processing agreements, those types of things. Contracts of all sorts, I would say is the biggest thing I do. And then the second thing is it’s really just that advisory kind of role, whether it’s, you know, that data privacy area or just general business questions if we’ve run into this problem. We’re not sure how to handle it. Can you walk us through it? What should we do? How should we handle it? That sort of thing.
Gotcha. What activities have you done to promote the firm? What’s been the most successful marketing activity you’ve done to promote the firm?
Yeah, that’s a good question. I’ve tried a lot of different things. I think one that’s been useful is Blogging on the website, you know having someone who does and I don’t do that myself I have as you know a content writer I work with who helps with that but You know, we’ll kind of come up with the ideas together and then she’ll do a blog write an email that I can send out do some You know social media posts that we can use throughout the month to kind of promote it. So getting that out through You know linkedin. I have a newsletter on linkedin and I have a separate, you email newsletter and then getting that on, you know, she’s good about looking at search terms, looking at things people are looking for and making sure we kind of work that into the blog to help people maybe find me a little easier.
So a little bit of SEO. Yeah.
Yes, yes. Which is not my area of expertise for sure.
Gotcha. What is your future plan for yourself and the firm?
Yeah, so I, as far as the firm goes, I’d like to grow a bit and get a few more attorneys, largely because that lets us help one of our existing clients more with maybe the needs they have that I can’t necessarily handle myself. And then just maybe some practice areas that, you know, maybe, and not in now, but just kind of expand that footprint a little bit where we can kind of serve more clients, do either more of the same work or maybe different work that I’m not handling now, and just get, I don’t have any aspirations of being a huge firm, but maybe three to five attorneys or so where we can, we just have a little more manpower to help out our clients.
Gotcha. Most of our listeners are entrepreneurs and aspiring attorneys or attorneys. What advice or what challenges have you faced in the past, say 10 years, and how were you able to overcome them?
Well, I think There’s always challenges. It’s hard to pick one. But I think the one that comes to mind for me personally is just working at a bigger firm. I kind of knew it’s not the right fit for me, but figuring out where to go from there. What am I going to do? Am I going to get another job? Am I going to open my own firm? I don’t think having my own firm was a great choice for me. I don’t think it’s necessarily the right choice for everyone.
I think the way I’ve dealt with that and I deal with a lot of the questions and challenges that come up working for myself is really being in tune with what you want to do. I think there can be a big temptation to look at, what do all the other lawyers do? What do all the other law firms do? And maybe I need to do things the way they did it because it worked for them. But I really think one of the best things you can do if you own a business is just you don’t have to do it the way everyone does it. Do it, do what works for you. That can be a real benefit to you, can be something that really sets you apart and you know, differentiates you from the other, you know, from your competitors. So don’t be afraid to do that and don’t be afraid to try things out. It might not work, maybe you try something and it turned out to be a terrible idea, but now you know that wasn’t the way to go and you can, you know, try something else that might work better.
Definitely, you kind of just answered this question, but what advice could you give someone coming right out of law school right now?
Yeah, so I would actually say if someone’s coming right out of law school, I really think working with another attorney in some form or fashion who’s a little more experienced is a really good idea. Even if you ultimately want to be on your own and really want to work for yourself and have your own firm, if you’re going to go that route right away, make sure you have a good mentor you can ask questions to. There are a lot of things we do as attorneys that are not necessarily things that you learn in school and so I think having someone who’s been around the block who can help you with those issues when they come up is really valuable you know when you’re getting started.
Awesome. Well, the website is kliebertlaw.com. Anywhere else that you would want our viewers to find you online? Okay.
Yeah, they can find me on LinkedIn. I’m always, you know, usually posting little tips on there. We’re on Instagram too, but I would say LinkedIn is probably the best. You know, I have a good personal account there. Under Kate, just Kate Kliebert. So that’s a good place to find me as well.
Amazing. Anything I haven’t asked you that you’d want our listeners to know?
I don’t think so. I am a big proponent of, like I said, working for myself. I think it’s been a really good fit for me. So if there’s anyone who’s tempted to do that, don’t be afraid. Give it a shot. You can always get a job if you need to. You can always go back to working for someone else you know, you don’t know if you don’t try it. So yeah.
Love it, that’s amazing. Well, I really appreciate you coming on the Wytpod and thank you so much, Kate. Yeah.
Yeah, thank you for having me.
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