Law clinic goes pro as students and profs launch startup practice
Eve Brown trained law students at her IP clinics. Photo by Len Irish.
It would be great if they could work together indefinitely, Brown found herself and her students saying frequently. Eventually she realized that perhaps they could—clinic graduates wanted intellectual property jobs, and many startups need lawyers.
So she and Paul Nagy, a former Suffolk business professor, left academia and opened Boston-based Bricolage Law. Offering flat-fee services that come with monthly payment plans as low as $130 a month, the law firm represents small businesses that don’t qualify for pro bono services but can’t afford traditional law firm fees.
Nagy serves as its chief operating officer, and two lawyers who were once Brown’s students are associated with the firm, bringing their own clients and keeping 80 percent of the income they generate.
Clients frequently have small budgets, Brown says, but that’s OK. “Bricolage means pulling together the resources you have and making something of it,” she says in her interpretation of the term. “Our underlying mission is to bring down the mortality rate of startups, which is about 90 percent.”
There’s no charge for phone calls, which are encouraged. “We want them to call us as much as possible and be part of their team,” says Brown, who for now is working out of a home office.
A former associate at San Diego’s Dixon & Bell (now under the name of Troutman Sanders), Brown started her academic career as a senior lecturer with the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University Bloomington. She found it surprising that the business professors and law school faculty there didn’t know each other, because the town of Bloomington has fewer than 83,000 residents.
She realized the two groups don’t communicate much, and they often have different outlooks.
“Businesses get frustrated because they see lawyers as roadblocks, and lawyers get frustrated because business-people avoid them until something blows up,” she says. “If businesses and lawyers would come together and understand each other’s contexts and worlds, they’d both benefit.”
Bricolage clients first meet with Brown, the other lawyers and Nagy. The team writes a work proposal, which comes with market research from the client’s industry. As of April the firm had 15 active matters, and Brown estimates that the firm’s total revenue is $130,000. Much of that is pursuant to monthly payment plans, she adds.
“We listen to our clients with a focus on their ultimate priorities and goals. More often than not, what a client thinks they may need in terms of legal services is not necessarily what would most efficiently get them to their goals,” says Nagy, adding that while many believe they need patents, that may not be the best option.
“We ask what the client wants to accomplish, and then analyze all of the legal tools and options available to come up with a plan.”
A MONSTER BATTLE
Stephen Norberg, who makes a craft root beer called Thunder Beast, contacted Bricolage Law after getting notice that Monster Energy Co., known for its popular drink, filed a petition to cancel his trademark.
“I was surprised. Then my surprise went to concern and outrage,” says Norberg, who registered his trademark in 2015. “They are making a claim that it’s too similar to ‘Unleash the beast.’ ” (Greg Hall, Monster’s general counsel, did not respond to interview requests.)
Before the law firm was formed, Suffolk’s Intellectual Property & Entrepreneurship Clinic won a battle with Monster for the online forum MonsterFishKeepers.
Norberg is crowdfunding $20,000 to pay for Bricolage Law’s services, and as of early June $3,395 had been raised.
“It’s definitely a big obstacle,” Norberg says. He’d rather use the money to expand his business, but Bricolage Law’s flexible payment plan allows him to keep going.
And Norberg doesn’t mind that his law firm has no physical office.
“I don’t have a fancy office either,” he says. “If they did have a fancy office, I’d be the one who has to pay for it.”
This article originally appeared in the August 2016 issue of the ABA Journal with this headline: “Law Clinic Goes Pro: Students, profs launch their own startup practice.”
