Law Subscribed (170) Trademarks + Subscriptions with Sonia Lakhany of 4L Education
Sign up for Practi, a new platform that helps law firms use subscription billing.
Here are the top 5 takeaways from this episode:
* Efficiency as entrepreneurial foundation. Sonia disliked the billable hour from day one as an associate because she works fast. Being efficient meant being penalized under hourly billing. That frustration directly drove her to go solo and price on flat fees, proving efficiency mindset is a core entrepreneurship catalyst.
* Teaching your competition grows your own practice. Counterintuitively, training other trademark attorneys through her “Two Weeks to Trademarks” course skyrocketed her own firm. As her education brand grew, so did her personal brand as the go-to trademark expert, leading to more client inquiries than she could handle, which she then funneled to her own alumni.
* Trademarks is an evergreen, jurisdiction-free practice area. Trademark demand goes up in both booms (more entrepreneurs) and downturns (side hustles, layoffs). It’s federal, so attorneys and clients can be anywhere. Built-in renewal and maintenance work creates natural repeat client relationships, making it an ideal subscription/flat-fee practice.
* Think in restaurant margins, not per-transaction losses. When lawyers worry about flat fees (“what if a matter takes longer?”), Sonia reframes it: a restaurant comps one table’s meal occasionally but still profits overall. Occasional overruns reveal pricing or efficiency gaps to fix — they’re not a reason to abandon flat fees.
* Try on new pricing models experimentally. Many lawyers feel trapped by hourly billing but don’t realize they have complete freedom to change their model client-by-client, matter-by-matter. Sonia’s advice: try flat fees or subscriptions on the next three clients. Treat it like a variable you can test, adjust, or abandon. The entrepreneurial freedom to experiment is the whole point.
__________________________
Want your question to be answered on a future show? Fill out this short survey.
Check out 4L Education.
Sign up for Paxton, my all-in-one AI legal assistant, helping me with legal research, analysis, drafting, and enhancing existing legal work product.
Get Connected with SixFifty, a business and employment legal document automation tool.
Sign up for Gavel, an automation platform for law firms.
Visit Law Subscribed to subscribe to the weekly newsletter to listen from your web browser.
Prefer monthly updates? Sign up for the Law Subscribed Monthly Digest on LinkedIn.
Check out Mathew Kerbis’ law firm Subscription Attorney LLC.
Want to use the subscription model for your law firm? Click here to sign up for a new platform that helps law firms use subscription billing.
Get full access to Law Subscribed at www.lawsubscribed.com/subscribe