This week, we continue our written interview with Mike Hilgers of Hilgers Graben PLLC regarding his experiences as a Biglaw refugee who is now running a successful boutique litigation firm. Please see below for Mike’s answers to my second and third questions about his jump to business ownership and the value proposition presented to both lawyers and clients when working with a smaller firm with a vision and lower overhead.
As always, I have presented Mike’s answers below along with some brief commentary of my own.
2) Jumping from Biglaw to start a boutique is something many lawyers fantasize about but never do. Why should they?
The freedom. Biglaw has many virtues, but if you’re at a big firm, and I was, you are just one cog in a much larger, older, established machine. You can’t change much — the culture is largely what it is, the conflict space is largely set, the identity of the firm and its internal rules and bureaucracy are in place, the financial incentives and location of offices are all static. With your own firm, you can create and implement your own vision — the culture, clients, service offerings, teammates, internal rules and systems, financial incentives, and basically everything else — it is a blank canvas. We have used that freedom to innovate and approach the business side of law differently, creating non-IP practices like a unique discovery counsel specialty and using geographic arbitrage to drive down costs. If you have an entrepreneurial or innovative spirit, there really is nothing like it.
Even with our success, there are still things I miss from my Biglaw days. When I first started the firm, it was my former colleagues that I missed most — Biglaw had a lot of really talented, driven, and interesting people. But we have recruited those same people to our firm, and I get to interact with them every day. So, now, as a business owner, the thing I miss most is having internal administrative teams for every business function. At big firms there are marketing, accounting, billing, and recruiting teams that let you focus on practicing law and you never worry about the administrative or non-legal sides of the business. Here, we have to wear many hats.
GK: Mike’s observations echo a lot of what we learned when starting KSK. At the same time, we have seen that the entrepreneurial spirit waxes, rather than wanes, in boutique firms that stay the course and place innovation and creative thinking at the heart of their strategy.
3) Should more IP lawyers be moving themselves out of high-priced metropolitan areas, for both quality of life and financial reasons, in order to offer a compelling alternative to clients with lower overhead?
Yes! We are passionate about this. Big cities are great and the firms in big cities typically pay their lawyers more, but they come with a cost — financially and otherwise. Housing on the coasts and other big cities is very expensive, and even with a larger salary it can take a long time to buy a home (especially while balancing student loans). And everything else costs more too, from babysitters to restaurants. Beyond the higher monetary cost, bigger cities tend to impose a time cost too, from higher billable hour requirements to lengthy commute times. I’ll give you an example. One attorney in our Lincoln office moved from a bigger city with his family, exchanging a two-hour daily roundtrip commute for one under five minutes and lowering his billable goal by hundreds of hours in the process. By moving to Lincoln and joining our firm, that person has gained over 750 hours of time back per year — to spend with his family, on other pursuits, or however he chooses. You can’t put a price on that. While cities like Lincoln have lots going on, smaller communities aren’t for everyone, but for the right people they have advantages you can’t replicate elsewhere.
For Hilgers Graben, highlighting our strengths as a heartland litigation boutique is essential. Any business needs to figure out how it is different and what sets them apart from the competition and it is no different with legal services. There are thousands of excellent litigators around the country. Setting out what makes you different in the litigation space is important because without as many cases going to trial, there aren’t a lot of objective ways to convey value.
For our firm, our differentiators are geo-arbitrage — having outstanding litigators who come from top schools and firms around the country but are based in Nebraska, where office space is $14/foot and everything is cheaper — and our client service first/“no jerks” culture. Rates and responsiveness are two objective measures of value, and they go a long way to creating a brand in the market. Smaller firms can be more nimble and have a great opportunity to innovate and differentiate themselves in the marketplace.
GK: There is a lot to the concept of “geo-arbitrage,” especially when it is wielded as adroitly as Hilgers Graben does for marketing purposes. While I do not deny that there are economic benefits to being based in a low-cost locale like Nebraska, there are also ways for “big city”-based firms to practice their own version of geo-arbitrage as a means of offering more attractive rates to clients and shorter commutes to prospective laterals. Whether that means embracing co-shared workspaces or relocating an office to a cheaper neighborhood will differ for every firm. At bottom, the key is to remember that clients want their lawyers to protect and advance their interests above all, and even the most ambitious lawyer prefers not to waste time commuting when they could be productively working. For firms of all sizes, a structure that lowers rates while increasing responsiveness will always be worth adopting.
My thanks to Mike for the insights and cooperation, and I wish him and his firm continued success. It is always a privilege to hear from successful and thoughtful IP lawyers, especially from someone who has achieved that success while maintaining a commitment to both public service and excellent lawyering without losing focus on family and quality of life. I am always open to conducting interviews of this type with other IP thought leaders, so feel free to reach out if you have a compelling perspective to offer.
Please feel free to send comments or questions to me at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or via Twitter: @gkroub. Any topic suggestions or thoughts are most welcome.
Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique, and Markman Advisors LLC, a leading consultancy on patent issues for the investment community. Gaston’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.