We have talked in class so far about how the law can help entrepreneurs and certainly how the law can hinder them. An interesting twist on that discussion is to think about how lawyers can become entrepreneurs, and how their particular skillset makes them strong candidates for doing so.

In this article, the author interviews three different lawyers who left their practice to start their own business. The author’s main inquiry was how those lawyers seemed to overcome the barriers and stigma that typically keep the two career paths separate.

Interviewing the founder of Tower Legal Solutions, the author quotes that “She explained that entrepreneurs must be willing to take risks that would make many lawyers uncomfortable. ‘Lawyers are tied to rules and deadlines, but as an entrepreneur, you never know what your day will look like’.”  This is an interesting observation because as the Top 10 Reasons Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers highlights, lawyers tend to be very risk averse and almost create more problems than they do solutions. For Tower’s CEO, being a lawyer in her past gave her the insight on this issue and allowed her to mentally overcome that barrier as an entrepreneur.

Interviewing the founder of Rocket Lawyer, the author recounts the founder saying that the essential skill of being able to say “no” to a client’s idea is only beneficial when that lawyer also can come up with an alternative solution. This mirrors one of the frustrations of Top 10 Reasons Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers, “Because they are deal killers”. Lawyers often get involved to help their clients avoid legal issues. But in practice, and especially when billing gets factored in, lawyers find themselves benefitting from finding a bunch of potential problems to confine their clients with. As both authors note, a good lawyer is one who can spot a problem. A great lawyer is one who can find a solution.

In these senses, understanding how lawyers think can provide a crucial edge against other, peer lawyers for a “wanna-be entrepreneur” lawyer. Finding the flaws of their profession and being able to offer a better service or internalizing those flaws and using it as a perspective to overcome those barriers is a way that lawyers can better serve their entrepreneur clients and even become successful entrepreneurs themselves.