Happy First Birthday to MLC!

In true self-serving fashion, I want to at least note a milestone in the life of our firm: our first anniversary.

When I started the firm as a sole proprietorship on June 15 of 2021, I had hopes for a firm like this, but my primary memory is of racing home from my last firm’s office to start billing in the hopes of having enough revenue for paying my rent in August.

Now, we’re a law corporation with 7 employees in 5 different legal markets, with a structure I find exciting and more than 200 clients from all over the nonprofit, philanthropic, and social enterprise spectrum. The growth of the firm over the past year, the culture we have created, and the quality of firm we are becoming is by far the thing I am the most proud of, professionally or personally.

When I went to read back over the first post I wrote with the idea behind MLC this morning, I certainly recognized my own writing and priorities, which I think have persisted today: a focus on external and internal equity, a different approach to billing and customer service, and not appreciating having to use my own name in the firm (suggestions for other words starting with “M” continue to be welcome so that we don’t have to replace the MLC business cards).

But I also recognized something profoundly different about that blog post from how I might write about the firm now. And, of course, that is because it is truly not “my” firm anymore, but “our” firm. This blog is no longer just a reflection of my thoughts about law firms and the nonprofit sector, but the outlet for a collective enterprise with governance driven by and profits split equally among all of our employees, with its own personality and vision. And, truly, that is everything I could ask for.

So, with that, I’d just like to give my immense thanks to our wonderful attorneys (Jennifer Hubbard, Ehsan Ali, Charli Cleland, and Cate Chang — all of whom are exceptional, with different backgrounds and skillsets, and who are already incredible resources for our clients), to our legal support specialist (Zulefika Mofokeng) who deals with the chaotic energy of legal work and wrangles it all into an incredibly efficient operation, and, most of all, to our managing paralegal, Michelle Leung. Without Michelle, I have no doubt that this would still be a solo shop, and a disorganized, less successful one at that — Michelle’s business acumen, prodigious skill as a paralegal, and natural talent as a kind and effective manager of people and operations has allowed us to thrive as an organization while providing consistent quality service to our many clients.

I look forward to future anniversaries, when I can fully recede into the background behind this great group and all the new people we hope to bring into our community in the coming months and years.