Laurel Edgeworth: The Matchmaker
Profile
Laurel Edgeworth prefers the driver’s seat. Tall, slender and athletic, her light blond hair cut into a sleek bob, the Sacramento, Calif., native is a master of control.
Within four months of graduating from law school, she passed the California bar exam, stepped into a full-time position at her firm, and launched an online business: Law Clerk Connection.
LCC is a virtual forum that allows law students to bid on contract clerking assignments at small-to-medium-size firms across the nation.
The website also provides a haven for solo practitioners to discuss the trials and tribulations of setting up shop, often after a life in BigLaw.
“She’s a zealot,” says David Silversmith, a technology consultant based in Washington, D.C., who brainstormed with Edgeworth online and on the phone about programmers and software options for the fledgling business. “I’d ask her: ‘Is there anything else you want to do? Solve world hunger?’ ”
If Silversmith had met Edgeworth in person, he would have noticed something else: a scar starting at her hairline that curves through her eyebrows and another zigzag line above her left eye. Edgeworth spent months relearning how to walk on once-shattered bones and years battling debilitating headaches after an accident her freshman year of college sent her car over a cliff.
“I would wonder if I was ever going to become what I wanted to be, or be relegated to a second-class life,” Edgeworth says.
Her mother and business partner, Sherry Kinnison, credits Edgeworth’s recovery and the launch of Law Clerk Connection to her daughter’s ability to strictly, passionately focus on a single task and not become overwhelmed by details.
While recovering from three facial surgeries requiring more than 1,000 stitches, Edgeworth wore a plastic shield to smooth the healing tissue—even in public.
She worked three part-time jobs to pay for her legal education, including packing flowers and delivering the Wall Street Journal. “She just kept on going,” Kinnison says of her daughter. “I admire her tremendously.”
Edgeworth, 34, graduated from the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law in December. She now practices at Timothy M. Cary & Associates in Cameron Park, Calif., which provided a sounding board for her idea of using technology to build direct relationships between law students and smaller law firms.
CHANNELING PRODUCTIVITY
To de-stress, Edgeworth takes to her Tirreno Razza road bike, riding 20 to 40 miles daily as she trains for her first 100-mile race this fall. Even on her bike, the tech-savvy Edgeworth is digitally connected through her iPhone. “It’s my favorite gadget for making time more or less productive,” Edgeworth laughs.
Edgeworth believes Law Clerk Connection will make time more productive for her clients through its competitive bidding model and its secure platform for document transfer between nationally dispersed law clerks and firms. LCC offers legal research tools and hosts discussion forums for students and attorneys to help them foster virtual mentorships and swap ideas on ways technology can enhance the profession.
“She’s using technology to create a virtual forum for the legal community,” says Silversmith, whom Edgeworth found through a tech-focused employment website. “Her initiation of LCC incorporates the type of work she’s promoting,” he says.
Hear Laurel Edgeworth talk about her new business.
Although Edgeworth has invested nearly $20,000 in time and money into her startup, the long-term goal is to develop a self-operating program so she can focus on her practice representing public agencies. She now devotes five hours a week to the site and contracts with a few part-time staffers. The online legal network has averaged more than 132,000 hits and 4,500 visitors a month since its launch in March.
“The responses from law students and lawyers have been positive,” Edgeworth says, although Bolingbrook, Ill., attorney and LCC user Mazyar Hedayat cautions that increased traffic is vital to the online community’s success.
Edgeworth is enduringly optimistic. “We’re still educating lawyers, and I know it’s going to be gradual growth,” she says. “But once more people use it, then even more people will use it. This model can really help lawyers utilize their time better.”
That and, perhaps, time management lessons from a master.
Photos by Martin Klimek
Share this profile
Comments
Report Abuse
Posted by Cheryl Clark Schaeffer - 5 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, 51 minutes ago
Wow. No wonder your mom is so proud of you. You have vision, guts, smarts & beauty! Proof that you CAN have it all. I wish you success in your endeavor!
High School friend of your Mom’s,
Cheryl
Posted by Michelle resko - 5 months, 2 weeks, 22 hours, 6 minutes ago
Hey laurel!!! You are amazing, work hard and you truly deserve great success. The article is awesome!!! Your extended family and friend (me) wishes you all the best!
Posted by Ron - 5 months, 1 week, 5 days, 17 hours, 25 minutes ago
Brains, beauty, creativity, drive, and courage…damn, if I were 10 years younger, I would quit practicing here in my state; pack my bags for Cali; and try to make you my wife.
Posted by tom w - 5 months, 1 week, 3 days, 8 hours, 51 minutes ago
Why aren’t there any actual projects on the site? For that much traffic, I’d assume alot more activity - don’t want to be a “hater” but where’s the beef?
Posted by jade - 5 months, 6 days, 21 hours, 22 minutes ago
This is only an idea.
I’ve checked on a number of occassions and there are NEVER any projects. And if you look at their listing of “top” clerks, tyou’ll see that they’ve completed zero projects! This model simply won’t work.
What’s worse is that there is a “bidding” process, driving down the value of the work produced. This doesn’t really work for solos, because you can’t be confident in the quality of the work you’d get. Nor does it work for the clerks, who will have to take work at cheaper prices to be competitive, and can easily choose to produce less than their best. (Particularly if a higher paying job comes up or if something more important for their career arises.) Because there is a constantly replenishing supply of “clerks” there’ll always be new untested people.
Posted by Laurel D. Edgeworth - 5 months, 3 days, 20 hours, 42 minutes ago
Wow, it’s been interesting reading all of the comments so far! I really appreciate people taking the time to contribute and bring new points of view. I feel compelled to respond to a couple of points brought up, in order to further the dialogue and to help people understand what Law Clerk Connection is and how it works.
Since March 2009, when we brought Law Clerk Connection live, we have actually had projects posted, though I’ll admit, not a lot. This is not a surprise though. Technology and innovation are not things easily and quickly embraced. For example, people did not jump right off their horses when the automobile came around. They were scared, hesitant and sometimes downright hostile about the emergence of this new mode of transportation. That did not stop Karl Benz from patenting and manufacturing his automobiles in the late 1800s. While only a few models sold initially, his idea helped revolutionize transportation. It just takes time, education and patience.
(I think it should be noted though, that projects can be posted “Privately,” meaning the Lawyer can choose to not have the post made public and only invite Law Clerks that he or she is interested in hiring, based on a review of the Law Clerk’s portfolio.)
Jade, I disagree with your assertion that a bidding process drives down the value of work produced for a number of reasons. First, if you are looking for something extremely important to be done, let’s say, eye surgery, would you have the doctor with the lowest price work on your eyes, simply because he is the cheapest? I think that most people would ask for his qualifications, where he went to school, any special training, how many times he had done the procedure and would ask to speak with other patients who had had the procedure done by him. The same is true with the Law Clerk Connection model. A lawyer does not have to choose the lowest bidder for the project, she may look at the Law Clerk’s profile, at their experience, their writing samples, feedback and video resume. Those Law Clerks who have the most relevant experience and qualifications, regardless of their rate, will have an advantage over a Law Clerk with little or no experience. The Lawyer may choose the best Law Clerk for the job and the budget. Odds are, that Lawyer is going to be billing the client a certain percentage over that Law Clerk’s rate anyway, so there is no reason to pay bargain-basement prices.
Second, no one should take work that is not worth their time, whether based on a monetary value or other extrinsic values. I would hope that no individual would be tempted to provide work product that is below their ability, much less someone in the legal field. Even as a law student, you have an ethical duty to do the best possible job for the client and if something is beyond your competency, to seek out more experienced help. Beyond the ethical issues though, is the fact that ultimately, that Law Clerk’s work is going to be critiqued by a Lawyer. The beauty of an open system such as this, is that there are extra incentives to do your absolute best. Other people will hear about substandard work and will not hire that person because of it.
Finally, there is a constant replenishing of people in the workforce, no matter what the field or forum. There is always a risk to take when hiring someone and entrusting them to do a job for you. Do people lie on their resumes? Yes. Do people exaggerate their experience and competencies? Yes. Would it be nice to see what other people think of your potential hire? Yes. That is why Law Clerk Connection offers a feedback mechanism for work completed within the marketplace. However, if no one ever gave a job to someone without experience, no one would be working today. Someone had to take a risk.
On that note, I am looking for other risk takers who are willing to test this new idea in the legal field. The next Lawyer to post a legal project on Law Clerk Connection and hire a Law Clerk to perform your project, Law Clerk Connection will pay that Law Clerk’s rate up to $500 for the project.
Thank you all for your comments!