A few days ago, I had a video chat with Tomoyuki Hachigo, co-founder of Sprintlaw (https://sprintlaw.com.au/), about how they built Sprintlaw by focusing on the needs of their target client groups – and created a firm that provides faster, simpler and more affordable legal services.

I have known Tomo and his co-founder, Alex Solo, for some years. We met the first time in a pub in Chippendale in Sydney. I believe 74% of all business used to happen in pubs and 86% of friendships started in pubs, or so I might have claimed without needing evidence before COVID. I remember thinking that they were far braver than I am, having the courage to leave the career certainty of BigLaw in order to run a law firm that helped “the little guys” who might not otherwise have adequate legal service. Most recently, I saw Tomo in person at the Russian Tearoom on 57th Street in New York, where we shared stories over a lunch of borscht and steak.

Since starting this blog, I had not had the opportunity to ask someone about the skills that help lawyers become better lawyers. With Tomo, I was able to ask him many questions related to essential skills for lawyers, and Tomo was kind enough to share his secrets.

In the video, we covered topics including:

• what Sprintlaw does for small businesses by providing fast, simple and affordable legal services

• how Sprintlaw uses empathy to understand their target client’s problem, and use their website to “speak” to their target clients directly

• how a law firm can structure their pricing and services to address the needs of their clients

• how to design a program to capture and make legal knowledge accessible to a team of lawyers

• how people skills contribute to someone becoming an amazing lawyer

• why there is a fraction of businesses who ignore legal risks, and why that might be a problem for those businesses

• what marketing methods and techniques work to reach businesses that need legal services

• the growth plans and ambitions for Sprintlaw over the next few years

One of our favorite tidbits of unusual information that Tomo shared was:

You can watch the full video of our unscripted conversation below:

Transcript of conversation

(Note: transcript is automatically generated, and may contain misspellings and typographical errors)

00:00

hello everyone welcome to another

00:01

conversation and today we're having a

00:03

conversation

00:04

with tomoyuki hachigo who is the

00:07

co-founder of sprint law tomo

00:11

thank you very much for making time to

00:12

join us today

00:14

thanks for having me horace how would

00:16

you describe

00:17

what sprint law does in a 30-second

00:21

pitch in an elevator pitch

00:23

sure um i said we we are a new kind of

00:27

legal provider

00:28

and we're sort of our mission is to

00:31

reinvent the way small businesses

00:33

get legal services um and so

00:37

uh we've got a suite of what we call

00:39

legal products

00:40

um and they're sort of they're packaged

00:42

legal services

00:43

that people can buy for fixed fee and

00:46

get things done

00:48

um and yeah i suppose in a

00:51

um it is just like

00:54

any sort of lawyer you get a legal

00:55

services done but um for us it's

00:58

it's um affordable quick

01:01

and easy that that's that will be the

01:04

the

01:06

the summary of what we do yeah what is

01:08

your secret to getting out there

01:10

and engaging with people who need legal

01:13

help

01:14

when we started sprint law we focused on

01:17

um

01:18

what you know what's missing what's

01:20

what's the gap in the market

01:21

what's the problem that we're trying to

01:22

solve and

01:24

the simple problem is that um our

01:28

target clients small businesses startups

01:30

um

01:31

they don't have access to quality legal

01:34

services

01:35

um business legal services in the same

01:38

way that big companies do

01:40

so you know we looked into why is it

01:43

that

01:44

you know so many small businesses find

01:46

legal services hard to find

01:48

or find it a bad experience and

01:52

it really comes down to a few things

01:54

like um lawyers

01:56

are expensive or appear to be expensive

01:58

confusing time consuming

02:01

um you know not online all those things

02:03

combined together

02:04

make it a poor experience so

02:07

we sort of start from that proposition

02:09

and we've created sprint law which is

02:11

a purely online um fast

02:14

legal service provider it's it's a

02:17

really interesting way of thinking about

02:19

this problem and and i've

02:20

i've never heard a lawyer frame it in

02:22

that way you you don't hear lawyers say

02:25

i recognize my clients have a problem

02:28

and i want to go and solve that problem

02:30

instead what you usually hear from

02:32

lawyers is kind of like well this is

02:34

what i practice

02:36

and i'm gonna go and look for clients

02:38

who need

02:39

my specialty my expertise

02:42

you guys have turned it around and and

02:45

it's almost

02:47

like design thinking for lawyers

02:50

when we first started i think um and one

02:53

of the problems with

02:53

law um it's getting better now but back

02:56

then especially

02:57

is that people especially young people

03:00

um

03:00

and even even most people these days

03:03

when you're looking for anything you go

03:04

on google

03:05

and you search uh you know get a

03:08

shareholders agreement or something

03:11

and uh typically well back then

03:13

especially you you go on

03:15

to a law firm's website um and

03:18

it doesn't tells you what they do like

03:20

you mentioned um

03:22

areas of law like corporate law

03:24

intelligence law and then

03:25

about us it's just all these heads of

03:27

people

03:29

um and that's not very intuitive for

03:31

just a

03:32

normal you know it might be good if

03:34

you're another lawyer and

03:36

if you're a general counsel of some big

03:37

company and you want to see the

03:39

expertise maybe that makes sense but

03:41

for your average business owner that's

03:43

that's not a very intuitive way of

03:46

looking at um

03:48

looking at what a law firm does or what

03:49

what what even legal services is

03:51

so um if you go to our website um

03:54

it's very very much about what

03:58

the from a customer's perspective um

04:00

what's their user journey

04:02

so typically our customers would search

04:04

on google or

04:05

see us on social media or whatever and

04:08

they'll get to our website and

04:09

it's very clear that you click this

04:11

button and you'll get a quote you know

04:12

that sort of um yeah i think it is a

04:15

form of design thinking but um

04:17

yeah really it's about um having a bit

04:20

of empathy thinking about

04:22

what the customer wants what what is

04:25

useful for them

04:26

yeah so

04:29

in in your world which is i suppose

04:33

one where you have to optimize

04:36

the work you deliver optimize the way

04:38

you perform

04:40

to service this customer group which is

04:42

much more cost sensitive

04:45

how do you go about um making sure

04:49

that what you're delivering is top-notch

04:52

legal advice

04:54

so we do fix fee only when

04:59

yeah and but that's sort of by design we

05:01

can only do

05:03

we we focus on the kinds of legal

05:05

services that are packageable

05:07

and so there's a sort of repeatable

05:10

element to the things that we do

05:12

and i think a lot of the a lot of the

05:15

problems around traditional legal

05:16

practice is that

05:18

these lawyers pretend like

05:21

every new matter they have is bespoke

05:24

and novel

05:25

when probably 90 of it is the same

05:28

and really the client shouldn't be

05:31

paying for that 90

05:33

on a time basis they should be paying

05:34

for the 10 human touch

05:37

and the remainder raining 90 is really

05:39

just kind of

05:40

firm ip which i suppose there's a value

05:43

to it but it is not time based

05:46

and so um we

05:49

by by doing that it streamlines the

05:52

process and so it brings the cost down

05:53

it brings cost certainty and it it also

05:56

standardizes the quality

06:01

every time we do a job we kind of feed

06:04

that

06:05

the process the knowledge from that into

06:07

our knowledge base

06:08

and uh we actually get better at doing

06:11

that same thing

06:12

um but we also can do it faster but with

06:15

um

06:17

with better quality and that's been

06:20

um we kind of always knew that that

06:22

would be the case

06:23

um yeah that's it's quite obvious when

06:25

you think about it but

06:27

having done it the that that is like

06:30

probably the

06:30

um one one thing that sort of just

06:33

getting better and better every

06:34

time and it's quite exciting yeah that

06:36

is a really neat way of putting it

06:40

lawyers work on experience right the

06:43

more experienced

06:44

lawyers have the better they're able to

06:46

work

06:47

and over time you kind of distill this

06:50

experience into

06:51

knowledge that's reusable i've seen this

06:53

before

06:54

i will act in this way because i know

06:56

it's going to lead to a better outcome

06:59

and one of the things that's not done

07:01

very well in most

07:02

law firms and most organizations of any

07:04

sort

07:05

is capturing of that knowledge in such a

07:09

way

07:10

that allows everyone else in the team to

07:12

use it

07:13

so how have you guys captured that

07:16

knowledge

07:17

for i think now you've got a team of 30.

07:20

so i suppose again this is thinking

07:21

about

07:22

the customer or the problem but in this

07:24

case

07:25

the user who's the lawyer why why why

07:27

are they behaving in this way

07:29

and it's because at the end of every job

07:33

um you know you sort of spend all these

07:35

hours on a job and

07:37

you you finally get to the end there's

07:40

no simple way where you can kind of

07:43

put that thing into the brains of the

07:45

organization

07:47

yep so it's just easier um

07:50

i think that's you know it's very simple

07:52

that you don't really

07:53

um do anything with that and so what

07:56

ends up happening is that you have your

07:58

own sort of local

07:59

set of files and um so that's an issue

08:02

because

08:03

the the most useful stuff is not really

08:07

accessible to everyone and um

08:10

uh yeah it's sort of hidden in in

08:12

people's brains

08:14

and so what we do is we have um a

08:16

knowledge system which we

08:18

uh we call the sprint yard i like the

08:21

name

08:22

[Laughter]

08:24

spring out is basically uh just a

08:26

collection of um

08:27

uh it's kind of like metadata of

08:31

um what we've done in every job so at

08:34

the end of every

08:34

job a lawyer would feel in a very simple

08:37

form

08:39

saying um you know that you tick some

08:41

boxes about whether it's got useful

08:43

causes

08:44

um whether um yeah you know

08:47

there are any uh uh whether it can be

08:50

turned into a precedent or

08:52

um who reacted for all that kind of

08:54

stuff as in like do we

08:56

act for the buyer or the seller that

08:57

kind of information um

08:59

and then based on that we have a process

09:02

of

09:03

you know pulling that document out

09:05

de-identifying it

09:07

putting it into a clause bank or

09:10

whatever and then

09:11

then you can next time someone another

09:14

one of your colleagues

09:15

have something similar they'll search on

09:16

the system and then

09:18

keywords will pick up certain clauses

09:20

and certain

09:21

information and that um

09:25

we kind of took a more bottom-up

09:27

approach where we knew

09:28

our lawyers behave we knew that if you

09:31

made lawyers

09:32

create gold standard templates and

09:35

update

09:36

things it'll just take ages and people

09:38

won't do it so

09:39

the most simple kind of um it's not

09:42

it's not like a it's not the most

09:44

polished way because

09:46

but it also doesn't have to be because

09:47

lawyers they don't really

09:50

they're going to read the thing anyway

09:52

so it's more about

09:53

finding certain phrases and clauses that

09:56

work and then a lawyer would then take

09:58

that and think well

10:00

does this work in my scenario that's

10:02

sort of how we design system

10:05

it's interesting you're talking about

10:07

sort of cost-benefit analysis

10:09

um of well do you really need the

10:12

rolls-royce or the lamborghini of

10:14

of a knowledge base or um can you

10:17

observe how

10:18

lawyers work and just give them

10:20

something that would drive them from

10:21

point a to point b

10:24

and it's interesting how and you would

10:26

know this being in legal tech how

10:29

a lot of lawyers when they think about

10:31

innovation

10:32

they go straight to technology and and

10:35

they

10:36

they think that if you if you buy this

10:37

software and implement it then suddenly

10:39

you're gonna

10:40

be very efficient and uh that's probably

10:43

that's not even the problem like with

10:44

the problem with legals is that

10:46

um it's it's a process issue and and

10:48

then once you

10:49

have a new process then you can apply

10:51

the technology um

10:53

you can't really give people tools to to

10:56

to you know be more efficient in the way

10:59

that

11:00

they've been inefficient in the past

11:02

yeah

11:03

it's it's that old saying of people

11:05

process technology or people process

11:07

product who do you look for when you

11:10

have lawyers join your team what what

11:12

are the qualities that you think

11:14

make a lawyer amazing sure

11:18

i suppose because we are a service

11:22

services customer-facing industry um

11:25

what makes the lawyer you know amazing

11:27

is what clients think

11:29

is um you know crucial for a good lawyer

11:34

and what i've learned over the years is

11:35

that um

11:37

good technical legal skills is just a

11:40

given

11:42

even uh um you you don't even get points

11:45

for that because

11:48

no one no one wants a four out of five

11:49

star lawyer right yep

11:52

uh so um so which is actually

11:56

you know all lawyers know that that's a

11:57

very high bar but that is the

11:59

expectation

12:00

i find right so um i suppose that's sort

12:03

of a given but that is

12:05

obviously very important for us um

12:08

then probably the more specific things

12:10

for us is that

12:12

um first of all they're uh i suppose

12:16

uh tech savvy or tech open to

12:20

new ways of things by that i don't mean

12:24

that i have to be able to

12:25

write code or anything um it's more that

12:29

um they're sort of open-minded in a way

12:32

such that

12:33

um when we say we're not doing it that

12:36

way we're doing it this way

12:37

or they'll also bring up new ideas and

12:39

why don't we do things this way

12:41

that's quite important for us um

12:45

because um that that's a that's a core

12:48

part of our mission to make things

12:49

better and easier and faster and

12:52

simpler and that's what clients want um

12:56

the most um i think uh most important

12:59

one actually is

13:00

is the people skills and probably

13:03

specific to our market

13:05

um where we we service uh you know

13:08

average business

13:09

owners and they're not they're not like

13:11

uh

13:12

you're not dealing with the general

13:14

counsel or some air sexist company

13:16

um and in

13:20

in that market in the sort of in the

13:21

corporate top tier market

13:24

they might actually just want someone

13:25

who is just a legal genius

13:28

and um can back up some sort of

13:31

um weird curly legal question and um

13:35

that

13:35

if that's what they want that's fine but

13:37

for us it's actually

13:38

we're dealing with um sort of less

13:40

complex legal issues

13:42

the more more important part is the

13:44

commercial

13:46

commercial problem solving um and that

13:49

requires

13:50

you know people skills understanding

13:51

what does this client

13:53

want what are they trying to achieve

13:55

what problems do they have and

13:57

how can i apply my legal knowledge and

13:59

skills to

14:01

solve what they want and that

14:04

um often you know people are just um

14:07

they might

14:09

they might just need someone with that

14:11

legal experience to

14:13

um tell them that this is a law and um

14:16

and and sort of say well this is what

14:18

you should do in your scenario because i

14:20

know that you're this kind of person

14:22

um that's a i suppose a

14:26

human human kind of skill that i think

14:30

as more of the technical elements of

14:33

legal practice becomes

14:35

more automated and process driven i

14:38

think that's probably where the future

14:39

of

14:41

the block of what lawyers should focus

14:43

on would be

14:45

i was talking to someone about um the

14:48

sort of behavior that

14:49

small business owners sometimes take not

14:52

always but sometimes

14:54

and that is when they're faced with a

14:56

legal

14:57

problem when they're faced with a

14:58

complex contract

15:00

sometimes they just go you know what

15:03

stuff

15:03

we're going to put that down we're not

15:05

going to read it

15:06

it doesn't matter what's my risk anyway

15:10

and so rather than getting advice

15:13

they're just wearing the risk um

15:17

now what's your take on

15:20

businesses like that and and why do you

15:24

think that there is this fraction of

15:27

businesses that decide

15:28

i'm not going to solve the problem and

15:30

how do we help them

15:32

sure um that's actually probably

15:35

the the reason why we started threat law

15:39

i wouldn't say it's a fraction of

15:40

business i reckon it's the majority of

15:42

businesses

15:42

have that behavior where um

15:46

they wing it basically

15:49

i see that as our biggest competitor in

15:51

that it's not it's not some other legal

15:53

provider it's

15:54

the it's the um that instinct

15:57

of just doing what you just mentioned

16:03

and um uh yeah

16:06

that that is sort of

16:09

we saw that as a problem because

16:11

actually when i used to work at a big

16:13

firm

16:15

uh you know you often i wasn't working

16:18

in m a

16:18

and sometimes you see smaller companies

16:21

on the other side

16:22

um or you know being bought out or

16:25

whatever

16:26

and you would see the quality of the

16:29

legal services that they're getting

16:31

through through dd and them some of the

16:34

key contracts that they've signed up to

16:36

can cost millions

16:37

in in an acquisitions no exit scenario

16:41

and that was actually the lightbulb

16:42

moment when we were like well

16:44

why why didn't they spend a few thousand

16:46

dollars up front and they're going to

16:47

spend

16:48

save millions lately it just didn't make

16:50

sense

16:51

that that sort of led us to the the

16:53

problems that we

16:54

mentioned which is that lawyers for that

16:57

market is is

16:58

too much of a headache and yeah up

17:00

winging it basically

17:03

it's almost like an access to justice

17:05

problem

17:06

um and i mean how how do you

17:11

how do you reach out to businesses like

17:13

that and say hey

17:14

guys don't wait a risk let us help you

17:18

um and you know for for just a few

17:21

thousand dollars or a few hundred

17:22

dollars or whatever the right cost is

17:24

let's alleviate that million dollar bill

17:27

down the track

17:28

how do you reach out to these businesses

17:31

and convince them

17:33

sure um so we've got a

17:36

fairly um sophisticated

17:40

marketing operation where

17:43

we've borrowed bits from you know tech

17:45

companies and digital agencies where

17:47

you've got a like a normal funnel

17:50

marketing strategy where

17:52

um yeah at the bottom of the funnel

17:53

you're you're targeting people who are

17:56

on google intentionally searching for

17:58

your problems

17:59

currently have um and that that market i

18:02

think has been the most underserved in

18:03

terms of marketing because

18:05

um there was some stat that said um i

18:08

forget it was probably like 70 or 80

18:10

of those people who who thought about

18:14

seeing a lawyer and went on google and

18:16

did a search

18:17

they ended up going with some

18:19

recommendation from someone they know

18:22

so what showed us was that

18:25

um yeah the website

18:29

user experience online news experience

18:31

for legal services

18:33

is not not not sort of not great like

18:34

people end up on those websites i

18:36

mentioned and it

18:37

just kind of confuses people even more

18:41

so there's that sort of that that bottom

18:43

of the funnel i think there's a lot a

18:44

lot of people you can capture

18:46

by employing fairly standard um

18:50

uh what's you know just sort of digital

18:52

marketing content marketing strategies

18:54

there

18:55

yeah but then there's sort of i think

18:58

that one's quite obvious and and um

19:02

that's sort of a quick win there's then

19:04

a lot more lots more opportunity

19:06

up the funnel where um

19:09

yeah you sort of build a brand around

19:12

who you are what you stand for what your

19:14

pro you know unique proposition is

19:17

and um yeah that's sort of a longer term

19:20

strategy which

19:21

um i suppose we've been working on since

19:23

day one and

19:25

um i've probably recently we're really

19:28

seeing

19:28

the fruits of that um the you know

19:32

the brand and the the kind of message

19:34

that we're trying to get out

19:36

yeah it's it's interesting um

19:40

what what you're describing is

19:41

definitely something that's borrowed

19:43

from

19:44

um digital marketing it's it's something

19:46

that i think other industries do

19:48

a lot better than the legal industry

19:52

and i love that it's brought you so much

19:55

success and

19:56

and and so much reward over time so

19:59

what is in the future for sprint law

20:03

where do you see yourselves going in the

20:05

next couple of years

20:08

our immediate focus is in australia

20:12

where

20:13

we want to be the go-to

20:16

provider for small business legals

20:20

and currently that's a market that's you

20:22

know quite fragmented um

20:23

you've got thousands tens of thousands

20:25

of

20:26

um solicitors across the state and

20:30

the country sort of

20:33

servicing their local geographies um and

20:37

i think that model is not

20:40

not the best for a lot of the business

20:41

legals that we do so

20:43

we want to be in a spot where when

20:45

people think of where small businesses

20:47

are

20:48

they need legals they think of you know

20:51

want a few brands and sprint laws one of

20:53

them you know that that's that's the

20:55

that's that's sort of where we're

20:56

heading to um and i think there's also

20:59

opportunity to

21:01

emulate this um

21:04

uh this model in in other jurisdictions

21:07

overseas as well

21:08

oh wow that's very exciting uh as in you

21:12

are

21:12

planning an overseas expansion yeah yeah

21:15

um

21:16

we've kind of experimented um

21:19

yeah in in the uk we sort of um we've

21:22

been looking into the market

21:23

and things like that but i think um

21:26

there are regulatory hurdles in

21:29

different jurisdictions

21:30

but i think from

21:33

from our research from all the

21:35

conversations we've had

21:36

everywhere in the world there's the same

21:38

problem that

21:40

legal services are a headache for small

21:43

businesses and

21:44

i think there's a huge opportunity

21:46

wherever i think just sort of the

21:48

conversion and the regulatory hurdles

21:50

that they're sort of specific to each

21:52

place but um

21:54

other than that i think the the

21:57

proposition is quite powerful

21:59

yeah tommo

22:02

your words today have just been

22:04

incredible

22:05

and i think you've revealed so many of

22:08

your secrets which we're now going to

22:09

spread to

22:10

everybody so i hope you're okay with

22:12

that

22:13

and thank you so much for your time

22:16

thank you thanks for having me