Dorna Moini: [00:00:00] I was at the small firm and then I went and started a company. I want to go do this, I'm always going to regret it if I don't go do this. If I do go do it, and if I fail, I can always come back to my law firm, knock on the door and A year later, say, you know, I'd walk, take, give me back my job but I would know that I had done it.

Welcome to Your Practice Mastered Podcast

MPS: Hey, Law Firm Owner, welcome to the Your Practice Mastered podcast. We're your hosts. I'm MPS.

Richard James: And I'm Richard James. Hey, MPS, what a great conversation we have today. The fact that we're going to get to talk about efficiencies inside of your law firm using a piece of the tech stack that is going to make all the difference in the world and a little bit of our pre conversation with Dorna lets us know we're talking to the right person.

Introducing Dorna and Her Journey

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Richard James: Dorna, welcome to the show today.

Dorna Moini: Thank you so much for having me. I love your podcast, and I'm really excited to be here.

MPS: I appreciate you being willing to be on, and we're excited to dive in and learn more about your journey, as well as the journey of Gavel, how that came to be. And to the Law Firm Owners listening, make sure you hit that subscribe or [00:01:00] follow button depending on where you're listening or watching, so that way, you don't miss any content like this because we're in for an excellent episode with Dorna today.

Dorna, you said, you've been a fan of the show, which I very much appreciate. So you likely know what's coming next. We'd like to break the ice a little bit. So what's something that maybe not everyone knows about you?

The Discipline of Ballet and Business

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Dorna Moini: So I was a professional ballet dancer in high school. Professional ballet and ballet in general is not like a team sport. So a lot of times, it doesn't come up in conversations, but that's something that I think still brings me a lot of joy in life and leads to the characteristics that help in business as well.

Richard James: Well, To be that good at any one skill requires a tremendous amount of effort and time and you're putting it in the work. But as I understand it, I've never done it, Ballet is like exceedingly difficult. Like It requires a tremendous amount of discipline and strength in areas of the body that you're not used to [00:02:00] strengthening as regular, just walking around humans.

So like Congratulations. And, here's my business question; does that discipline that you displayed with ballet through the years transition over to the rest of your life as well?

Dorna Moini: A 100%. In ballet, you have to be very regimented, and attention to detail is paramount. You can't be a minute late, or a second late for anything. And I think that has translated into my, life as a lawyer, and then as to my life a business lady. owner, as well. With some give and take on things that you need to actually throw away from that discipline to have a successful business and take some risks that you might not have otherwise as a ballerina or as a lawyer.

Richard James: Yeah, my name is Richard James, and I definitely over engineer and need to learn to take a few more risks every now and then. I can relate to that too.

Yeah. MPS, I think you would agree that discipline is the key to the success though, isn't it?

MPS: I mean, Discipline is the backbone to any successful person or successful endeavor. So it's no surprise, Dorna, that you're here [00:03:00] and we're speaking today. And that discipline has carried through. Do you still participate in ballet in any way, shape or form?

Dorna Moini: I do try to, but it's mostly just going to classes on my own. I'm not doing any performing anymore.

MPS: Well, that's super awesome. and like I said, to plus Rich, I've heard it's extremely difficult, so props to you on that. That's awesome.

But I'd love to hear because you alluded a little bit to how it's carried over into your life as an attorney and a business owner.

From Attorney to Tech Entrepreneur

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MPS: So why don't you share the high level there of your journey as well, initially an attorney and now a business owner at Gavel

Dorna Moini: Yes, so I am a former attorney. I practiced for about seven years at two big law firms. And I actually never planned on becoming a business owner in this sense, although I will say 100% that being a lawyer and, doing, and practicing law is running a business in and of itself, even if you are within a larger practice.

So when I was at a firm, I was doing a lot of pro bono work, specifically in the area of domestic violence. [00:04:00] And what I was finding was that, hopefully many of the listeners here know about access to justice gap. So I was finding that there were so many people who were coming in through the door, needed assistance on domestic violence matters, but so few that we were actually able to help with the resources and hours that we had available.

Building Gavel: The Early Days

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Dorna Moini: So I thought, how could I spend my time as a lawyer on the more fact intensive, legal intensive parts of the work, and potentially use technology for some of the parts of the work that I could ramp up and automate within that practice. And I'm not an engineer, I'm not a coder, but I live in San Francisco at the time, and San Francisco at that time, and probably still now, you look left, you look right, everyone you know as an engineer.

So I had this idea that I could build a technology tool to help me automate some of the areas of law and to build something similar to TurboTax. you know, The TurboTax model where a consumer or a client could come in, enter all their data, be routed down different paths, generate [00:05:00] documents for their case, and then you could help them e-file.

But then I would be able to then spend my time reviewing the documents, taking them to court, taking on their appeal, doing the really, really critical work. I got together with a friend of mine who was an engineer. We built TurboTax. exactly that.

We built a platform that would take you end to end, generate things like the restraining order, gun restriction orders, child support, spousal support, whatever you needed that associated with the domestic violence legal situation that you had.

We launched that tool, we got a ton of traction for it, and then we actually started to get some press for it. From that press, not only did we get customers who would, come for, who needed help with domestic violence legal work, but we also started hearing from other lawyers in other areas of law and other jurisdictions who were asking us, how can I build something like what you built for domestic violence in California, but for my own area of law in my own jurisdiction?

Long story short, we ended up building a platform for any of those lawyers to be able to [00:06:00] do that on their own. So now I run a company called Gavel, and we are a no code platform that allows lawyers to come in, build out um, rules and logic and data that they want to capture, and create logic as to how the documents in their cases should generate.

And it allows for a lot of robustness and complexity, but it's also really easy to use. And we started in the legal aid space, so a lot of legal aid organizations started ramping up how many people they were able to serve through our platform, but now we we serve both legal aid and for profit law firms across the field.

Richard James: So first and foremost, what a blessing to legal aid, right? because you've just taken something that doesn't work. It doesn't have enough people to process all the work that they need to process and you've just given them the ability to be efficient. What a testimonial in and of itself. right? So anybody that's in the legal field, worked in at law understands legal aid, understands how The demand is high and the supply is low, and that if you were able to help them, boy, what could you do for them?

But I do have a question around the [00:07:00] entrepreneurial journey. right?

Challenges and Lessons Learned

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Richard James: Because talking to that person, that sitting at their computer, whether it's two o'clock in the morning or two o'clock in the afternoon, maybe it's a Saturday, they've just put in a full week, they're still looking at a pile of work they got to do before they get into their first case on Monday for whatever reason. And they're like, just almost feeling like they're burned out. They don't feel like there's light at the end of the tunnel. And it's just time to make the doughnuts all over again.

So I want to unpack your journey just a little bit. So a couple of questions. Okay. First I'm curious, you have entrepreneurial parents? Like, Were you raised in an entrepreneurial home?

Dorna Moini: I was, I would say, but honestly, so both of my parents ran their own small businesses, but they actually dissuaded me from that. I feel like they would say, don't do this, just go work for a company. And now that I'm in this world, I realized that you actually have a lot more flexibility and I'm sort of trying to preach back to them.

You didn't have to sit at your desk for 16 hours a day answering to someone else. And I mean, You still have to answer to your clients. But I did, the answer is yes. I did, but not one that propelled me [00:08:00] into, this it.

Richard James: Yeah, the grass is always greener, right? Entrepreneurship is the only career path in the world where you'll choose to work 80 hours for yourself to avoid working 40 hours for somebody else. Right. so I get it.

My next question around that is, did you like say goodbye to practicing law and make the leap? Or did you very much work nine to five to pay the bills and 5-9 to work on the business? Like What was that transition look like?

And I ask this to speak to the person who's listening, cause there's a lot of law firm owners out there that either want to add another practice area, or they want to add another office or whatever it is. They want to bolt onto their business, and they're thinking like, when should I make this leap and what should that look like?

So what did it look like for you to take this new opportunity?

Dorna Moini: Yeah, so I usually just say it in a sentence, It's like, I was at the small firm and then I went and started a company. But and it feels so simple, but it was a very arduous decision because well, first of all, I was working at a big firm, so there wasn't really an option to work 9-5 to 5 and then work on this other thing on the side.

I realized that you know, I was working like, basically from the moment I woke up [00:09:00] until the moment I went to sleep and weekends and was on, in trial a lot as well. So I realized that I wasn't able to fully build this tool unless I I went and gave it my all and spent my full time on it.

So the thought process there was, I want to go do this. I'm always going to regret it if I don't go do this. If I do go do it, and if I fail, I can always come back to my law firm, knock on the door, and a year later say, you know, take, give me back my job, and I would get it. And you know, the worst thing that could happen is I lost like a year of salary. But I would know that I had done it.

I decided, through that process that I was going to leave. Now that departure was obviously very scary. You go from having a steady paycheck at a firm to now, bank accounts only going down because they're not making revenue yet and I'm only paying this one engineer who I'm having build things for me, and I'm not getting paid anything. But throughout that process, I learned so much. And I got to a point where I could set my own milestones of whether I [00:10:00] thought that we were going in the right direction for me to keep doing this full time, or whether I would need to find other paths to potentially go back. And luckily, it has worked out and has been a great decision.

So to anyone out there who's thinking about making any fundamental change, it doesn't necessarily need to be that you're starting another company. But for example, you're saying, adding another practice area, that might require you to actually step back in some ways from what you're doing in your core practice to allow you to propel forward, maybe six months later. And so I, highly encourage taking that risk because that six months or whatever that time period is that you might lose is definitely worth taking the potential opportunity that lies on the other side.

Richard James: I love it. MPS, there is an argument for let's burn the boats. This is what we're going to do, right? There is no other option. Success is the only option.

MPS: There is absolutely that. And I think, you illustrated it very well there, Dornan. And I want to jump into, because look, as we all know, business isn't usually just like straight up and to the right. [00:11:00] There's a lot of ups and downs. And, uh, And so I'm going to want to learn a little bit more about some of the obstacles you face.

And look, if you're a law firm owner out there listening to this and you're facing some obstacles right now, trying to figure out this business side of the things, you could go to you could go to the com and we could unpack that for you and jump through some of those obstacles and figure out what those look like, just like we're about to do with Dorna here in just a moment.

So Dorna, for you in your journey, what was the Did obstacle? a big obstacle where you're like, oh, this is a major pain point. And then if so, what was it, and what'd you do to overcome it? do to overcome it?

Dorna Moini: Yeah, so I think one of the biggest obstacles for me, which actually we got on the recording, we were talking a little bit about sometimes lawyers going into the law practice, but not really understanding as much about the business side, which I know you guys help a lot with. I think that was my biggest obstacle, is that I went to undergrad, I went straight into law school, that went straight to working for a law firm. A law firm that was a big firm that gave me a lot of support, which in some ways [00:12:00] became a crutch. Like I never created my own shell for a document. I would send it, we had a word processing department, I'd be like, create me a shell for this document. So there were a lot of things I sort of didn't know how to do yet, and I had to just dive right straight into.

And I think, these are some of the tips that I now, when we have customers, I try to share these with them so they don't get hung up on them. But I will say to them, the number one thing that I didn't really fully understand when I left the firm was really getting a good idea of the cost of acquiring a customer, and what that means for your margins and whether you're gonna make money.

So before we launched what is Gavel, we were specifically working in this domestic violence space. And we launched a product that was $15. And was cost us, 10, we didn't really have like a market already, I didn't a ton of, and we had some of these legal aid organizations that we were working with, but we needed a broader market. So we were spending money on Google Ads.

Those Google Ads were sometimes more than $15 to acquire that customer.

And then on [00:13:00] top of that, it was very high touch. There were people who were asking us for help on, for example, someone was like, I don't even know how to download these things from my zip file. So me as the only support person for this company, downloaded all these documents for this person 'cause I wanted to provide really good service, went to the post office, mailed it off for them.

So really, we were losing money on some of these early sales because I didn't have a really good understanding of how much it would cost to acquire a customer, what the pricing model was that was right. And that was, something that, you know, now we, sell directly into law firms, but that's been something that's always in the back of my mind is understanding, if you have these costs that go in, how are you going to get customers and how are you going to make that profitable? And I think a lot of lawyers are having to think about that now because the billable hour is changing and a lot of people are dropping it and especially with efficiency growing, they're dropping in favor of alternative fee models that actually make them more profitable, and it makes sense, make more sense for them and their, [00:14:00] clients. So I would say, that's a big learning that I had that would have thought about a little bit more in depth if I could go back in time.

Richard James: Well, So huge. So first of all, congratulations because many lawyers, business owners stop. They don't figure that out. Like If I say, what is your cost to acquire a client that like I get deer in the headlights, right? And we talked a little bit off record about the hermoses and Acquisition.com. and, actually the YP comment combinator, from San Francisco area, the founder that really was the guy who came out with this concept of a couple of different ideas. And one of them was, really launching this CAC to LTV ratio. right? So this cost to acquire a client versus what it is for your lifetime value of your client, and lifetime value of your client being not what you just sell the service for, but what is minus cost? What's your gross margin on that service? Understanding how those two things relate is super important. Now, one of the reasons why we love law firms, and, not only because they do great work and God's work in my opinion, but it's also [00:15:00] because their CAC TV ratio, when they get it right, it's usually very high. It's a great ratio. So it makes it a wonderful business to be in when you can figure it out. But if they get their cost per acquisition and their LTV wrong, AK said differently, they don't know how to market correctly, or they don't know how to sell correctly, and their cost per client acquisition is too high, or they don't charge the right fee and they have too many inefficiencies, then their gross margin is low and now their ratio goes away and they end up not profitable, right?

So I know we just got into a lot of math and I just lost half the audience because they don't love math and I get it, but that it's a really important concept. But what I love about everything that you said, was you didn't know, you, this is something, this was a new learning for you. And so what you did was rather than go, you know what? I got to scale this thing. You said, no, let me jump in and let me serve my clients. I know I'm going to have to be the one that downloads all these into a zip file. And, [00:16:00] But I'm willing to do that because A; it's right for the client. And B; it's going to teach me how this needs to be done and what obstacles we have to overcome.

And so MPS, I mean, the ability to do the non scalable, I think is a real value bomb for people listening. Would you

MPS: It absolutely is, and it's not even just doing the unscalable at the start, but also, even if you've grown a law firm, and now you're in a phase where a particular system in the firm seems to be extremely inefficient, being willing to step up and step into that role and actually doing it again to figure out where the inefficiency is, that's unscalable.

And usually as a law firm owner, when you get to that point, probably not the most ideal or your favorite thing in the world to have to do to go step back into the day to day grind, But it also shows us a lot and gives you a lot of feedback on what could be broken and why a particular system may be inefficient.

[00:17:00] So Dorna, I So Dorna, you for that. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it probably also identified for you a lot of opportunities within the early phases there too, would you agree?

Dorna Moini: Definitely, a hundred percent. I think it's saying, if you're going to run the sausage factory, you know, you have to know how to sausages made. As you're growing, there are some parts of the business that you're just never going to have enough time to be deeply inside of. But when you, like you're saying, when you're identifying that there could be problems, places you need to dive in and understand it deeply yourself so that you can help your team work through it. And then you can coach others as you're growing, especially if you're scaling up the number of people who are at your firm.

Richard James: Yeah, look, this is a map We could stop here. The episode could end and like, that's the masterclass, right? The masterclass is when you find an obstacle, jump in with both feet, do the unscalable, unpack it, figure out what the obstacle is that we need to overcome the obstacle, and then put people in place or systems in place or software in place to conquer that obstacle. And then [00:18:00] step back, and go look for the next one.

And at some point, your business will get so big that you won't be able to be in everything, but hopefully, you've trained your team to be able to identify and fix the same things that you just did. And so that's the idea of scalability.

But a lot of people listening to this, law firm owners listening to this, are literally, it's like them and a part time you know, receptionist. right in there.

They're just slammed. And they, all their calls go to their cell phone. And if somebody tries to call their cell phone, they get the message the voicemail box is full. And they're going to court during the day or doing legal work during the day and calling their prospects back at night, and they're just, like, I can't get a job cause they don't have a car, and I can't get a car cause they don't have a job. They're in this circular world.

Right. And so what did you do? Like, what was the key for you Dorna, to be able to break through that circular world, to break out to the next level?

The Importance of Prioritization

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Dorna Moini: Yeah, I think that's something that I would say, prioritization is the answer. And I think it's something that carries forward, no matter how big you are no matter how [00:19:00] many people you have supporting you. Every time we add an employee, I think, Oh, this is going to be so much easier, but it's not.

You still have to prioritize and there's just more on your list to do. So being able to sort of really make, lists and figure out where the impact of those choices and the places where you could spend your time are, and sometimes having to honestly just say no to certain things. There are some things that you just can't do. aren't going to be able to do, or you're going to have to leave for later.

And that's actually how you know that you're prioritizing well is when you're having to make difficult decisions about what to say no to and what are the top priorities that will help you propel forward.

Richard James: Yeah, the bigger you get, the bigger those decisions have an impact. right? So this is a poorly timed political conversation that we're not going to have, but I'm going to say a name that's going to bring up a political connotation in Elon Musk. And I don't mean it in a political manner. But in his business manner, I heard an interview with him and he said, you know, when I was smaller, I was making 10, $10,000 decisions and then 100, $100,000 decisions. And then the [00:20:00] decision I made was a million dollar decision. He said, today, a decision I make, we do $275 a a year. He's like, when I make a decision, it very well may be a $1-5 billion decision on a daily basis.

It just melted my brain to think about that. But it makes all the sense in the world because that's what it's like to run a business. Your decisions in the early days are smaller and they don't mean as much. And as you go and you scale, all that means is, if you didn't learn the proper skillset to learn how to identify the problem, identify the obstacle, overcome the obstacle, and just making decisions by you know, throwing it from the hip, you could very well cost your company an awful lot of money, time, and resources. So I love this conversation. And And MPS, I

MPS: No, no, no. I think this has been excellent. I don't, I guess,

Exciting Future of Gavel and Legal Tech

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MPS: what's got you fired up and excited today. it could be business, could be personal, could be both?

Dorna Moini: Yes. In terms of our, business, we have a lot on the horizon. And I think, the advancement of technology [00:21:00] has allowed us to do so much more. So for us at Gabble, like our mission as a company is to make access to the law universal. And the way that we do that is by empowering legal professionals to serve and reach their clients in better ways.

And there is so much on the horizon for us that we're working on and feature launches that we have that we know are going to have an impact on that. We are mostly product led growth company, which for many lawyers might not know that term, but the idea is that we are less outbound sales and more people find us in different places online, try out the product and decide they love it and want to adopt it for their firm.

And so, every feature release that we have actually is able to make a pretty big impact in how our customers react to the system and how quickly they're able to get up to speed and how quickly they're able to get ROI in their businesses. So that for me is what, uh, the reason that I wake up every day, in addition to working with a group of really amazing people.

And I know we didn't get into this, but like hiring would probably be the other, [00:22:00] other topic that we could spend a whole podcast on. The people who you work with, whether it's just your one assistant or whether it is a team are so critical. Those are the reasons that I get up every morning to come to work, and there's a lot in store for this year and 2025.

Richard James: How many team members you have?

Dorna Moini: We above about 20.

Richard James: Yeah. So we probably need to have you back and have another conversation about team, because that's gonna be a great conversation. But, going through a very interesting time. So, I'm older than everybody here, and so I owned businesses long before you guys were in the game. And one of them was in the funeral business. And there was a window where, when I owned funeral homes, that we called it the golden era of being in the funeral business. You made more money in the funeral business at that era than in any other time. Price elasticity was at its highest technology was bringing some costs down. There were efficiencies to be had. There was very little barrier, or there was not a lot of conversation about like price shopping or any of that.

[00:23:00] Today, some 20 some odd years later, that business is not a great business to be in. The valuation of a funeral is a big. about 20-27% of what it was, when I owned funeral homes in 1995. I think we're entering into a golden era of law. I think owning a law firm is going to get more and more profitable over the next few years because of technologies like Gavel, that are going to help law firm owners reduce their overall costs for labor so they can produce more cases with the same people.

As well as you. find where money is stuck in the client process pipeline, and release that money because we're really relieving processes. And because of technology, we're going to continue reduce expenses and make things more efficient for the firm, and be able to realize some of those price savings to the consumer as well and get rid of some of the hourly stuff. All this is going to be good. There is going to come a time when we're going to cross over that threshold and [00:24:00] things might go in the other direction, but that is in the future down the road and we can't worry about it because there's not a lot we can do about it.

All we can do right now is to optimize the amount of clients we can serve for two very good reasons. One, because what firms do, in my opinion, is like doing God's work. I've said this before, so I want to help as many people as we can who really need the help. And two, whilst we're doing that, let's let the law firm owner be as profitable as possible, so they can pay the right market base wage to their team, so they could share in the spoils of the growth, so they can set up legacy for their own family and create a succession plan for the next generation that wants to come through and run the firm. This is the time to do it. Now is the window. And so, I just applaud you for what you've built. I thank you for giving back to the community and what you've done. And I love that you're a product-forward first [00:25:00] company, very much. Let's figure out how to build the best sandwich that anybody's ever had and when they take a bite of that sandwich, they're not going to want any other sandwich, any other time, and they're going to tell everybody about it. We love that about what you do. We try to do the same thing in our world too.

Closing Remarks and Special Offer

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Richard James: So thank you so much for being here. Could you do me a favor? Could you let everybody to know how they can find out more about you, where you want them to go, if you have any kind of special offers or anything you'd like to do to point them in the direction to your company?

Dorna Moini: Yes, absolutely. So, Everyone can find me personally, I'm on all the social media channels at Dorna_@_Gavel and I actually talk a lot about legal technology and how lawyers are using tech on those channels if everyone, anyone wants to follow there. If you're interested in using automation software, we are at www.Gavel.io. And we would love to give a 10% discount to any of your listeners. So if anyone, if you mentioned, your practice mastered to any of anyone on our team as you sign up, we'd love to give you

MPS: Well, we appreciate that. Thank you for [00:26:00] being so kind to the audience here and to the law firm owners, thank you. Thank you for investing your time on being here. Dorna, thank you again for taking the time to be on. You really provided a ton of value today. And law firm owners, if this isn't your first time listening or watching around here, make sure you hit that subscribe or follow button, depending on where you're listening or watching. And uh, make sure to show Dorna some love down in the comments below.

Let us know if you have any questions, and make sure to hit that like button as well. Thank you again for your time. And law firm owners, thank you for yours.

Richard James: Hey, Dorna,

Dorna Moini: much for having

Richard James: you know, we don't often get to talk to lawyers who love business as much as that you do. right? Not all of them do. Some of them do. Many of them that come here do, but you know, we talk to hundreds of lawyers a month. So when we get to have these types of conversations with lawyers who have really proven that you can take the brain that God gave you to be an attorney and apply that intelligence to learning how to figure out business and watch it soar, it's really a joyful moment for us.

So thanks for sharing that with us today.

Dorna Moini: Yes. [00:27:00] Thank you so much for having me. And hopefully, some of these conversations will propel others to find their groove and enjoy the business side of law, just as much as they love practicing law.

Richard James: Sounds

MPS: That's the pod!