Gwen Griggs, Managing Director, ADVOS Legal
In an interview with Invest:, Gwen Griggs, Managing Director of ADVOS Legal, talked about the firm’s record-breaking performance in both revenue and profitability, driven by its innovative ADVOS Pro model, which aligns the goals of clients with their counsel, focusing on deliverables rather than billable hours.
What have been some of the main highlights and achievements for ADVOS Legal in the last 12 months?
Built out of our business backgrounds, we continue to focus on radical alignment with our clients, and measuring what matters. Our ADVOS Pro model focuses on the important outcomes (jettisoning the billable hours) and continuously improving the experience and service for our clients. As a result, our Net Promoter Score is consistently above 90.
This past year we also launched ADVOS Pro, a community of truly inspiring law firm owners, and are using the ADVOS legal approach to continue to innovate.
What are the greatest opportunities in the legal and advisory industry in Jacksonville?
We are fortunate to have a solid mix of large international law firms and boutiques. The market is a small enough market that the professionals know each other well and those relationships help drive great results for our clients. I expect that the community will continue to emphasize this professionalism and see an opportunity to distinguish ourselves from other markets.
What are some of the main issues clients are encountering?
In addition to transaction work, we spend a lot of our time counseling clients on growing in a smart way. The market for lower middle-market companies is strong and doing well, especially here in the Southeast. In terms of the day to day, we are seeing our clients focus on revenue-generating agreements and various employment issues. Ensuring a strong culture when people have been working remotely is a common challenge we are seeing.
What sets the firm apart from competition in the region?
My business partner and I came from BigLaw to the General Counsel of companies growing through acquisition. In those roles we had an opportunity to see how legal fits into the overall operation and strategy of a growth business. Based on that experience, we created a truly fractional model, which allowed us to price based on results and invest much more heavily in the client relationship and overall experience. Our clients are able to budget their legal spend and plan for any deviations. From the outset, we developed the technology that runs ADVOS on a no-code low-code agile platform, adopted automation early in our history and continue to evolve and improve. The pricing model and the technology and systems, give us the opportunity to be much more closely aligned with our clients and invest in knowing their business well.
Have you noticed any changes in demand for your services?
We haven’t seen any slow down in demand or activity and believe that is driven in part by innovative business leaders.
What are the main industries that are showing signs of growth and an increase in activity?
Technology companies and AI are high growth, as well as healthcare and healthcare adjacent companies.
How are you benefiting from population growth, business relocations and corporate expansions in the area?
The influx of financial and intellectual capital to this marketplace has “raised all boats” as the saying goes. For our growth-stage clients, access to that intellectual capital along with their networks continues to drive growth.
What are the common legal mistakes new businesses moving to the area are making?
Particularly with respect to businesses moving to the area, many are not familiar with the benefits and efficiencies available if their company is structured properly. Regardless of whether they are new or not, the most common legal mistakes relate to offering equity at an early stage or forming a “partnership” and not thinking through what might happen at what might be necessary for future sustained growth or on exit. When they try to raise capital or grow to the next stage, the management team will have to address the lack of thoughtful planning and can be faced with expensive – and completely avoidable – challenges.
It is worth exploring how growth will be financed and where there are opportunities to bootstrap. Finding experienced advisers can go a long way to avoiding mistakes and building a strong network. I highly recommend organizations like GrowFL and the Association for Corporate Growth to find advisors who are committed to serving companies of similar size and stage.
What are the biggest challenges for ADVOS Legal and for the wider legal industry?
The biggest disrupter of the legal industry – which is both a challenge and an opportunity – is the impact of AI. About a year ago, Goldman Sachs released a study that 44% of tasks within the legal industry can be replaced with AI. For those of us who have watched the sea change that has occurred even in the last 10 years, it makes a lot of sense. We adopted automation when the firm was founded and used several industry specific AI tools to provide additional levels of review, improve quality and turn-around time for documents we are drafting. For our business and pricing model, it is well aligned but we are big believers in the idea that traditional hourly models will need to innovate based on the changing expectations of their clients.
What is your outlook for the next three to five years?
AI will be a big disruptor in the professional services and specifically the legal profession; the more ubiquitous it becomes, the more clients will expect their professionals to leverage available tools. There are so many use cases, professionals will need to stay well informed about the opportunities, as well as the challenges.
