Why I Started The Philanthropy Law Firm

As a young lawyer I wanted to do things differently.

I started by career at a business law firm. Many of my clients were founders of large companies who came to us at critical moments in the lifecycle of their businesses. Which also meant they were at critical moments in their lives. Some were realizing life-long goals, some restructuring their businesses to make them better reflect their own needs. Some were going through major life changes and found themselves stymied by the accompanying legal baggage. Each knew what they wanted, and many had optimistic hopes that they assumed were unrealistic. The knew what they wanted and needed a clear runway on the legal side. Yet even our best-served clients began the process with a sense of limitation and constricted possibilities. Their real goals, their expectations, their hopes were not part of the conversation. So, I made them part of the conversation. I knew my clients were already thinking beyond the immediate problem, so I asked. And asking made me a better lawyer.

But that wasn’t the way I was trained to work. instead, I was supposed to use a rote set of practices based on the most obvious features of the situation. These would inevitably lead to a call-and-response cycle of negotiations the other party’s counsel that may have had little to do with the needs or concerns of either party. As I came to understand the deeply personal nature of being a legal counsellor, it became increasingly obvious that with deeper understanding we often have opportunities to help people meet their needs or reach their goals in faster, simpler, and far more effective ways. It also offered opportunities to look beyond the current situation, such as leaving the client well-positioned for the next stage of their journey, or developing a solution that simplified their legal needs in other areas. By treating my clients as I would my friends I did better work and enjoyed it more.

On one occasion with a small amount of additional research I was able to save a client’s entire legal budget with a short e-mail and a five-minute phone call with the attorney for the other side. My client got greater rights and protections than he had believed possible. I got the satisfaction of having done the best lawyering possible in my client’s interest. Plus, I got to move on to other challenges instead of spending those hours on expensive work that benefited no one.

I later moved from corporate law into complex litigation. Now, as one lawyer on a very large team, I noticed a similar mindset. Endless back-and-forth based on an unvarying playbook, consuming hundreds of hours of attorney time to prolong situations that neither helped or hurt our client. But in that environment I found that by referring back to the core issue, and not losing sight of the key underlying questions, I could surface options and strategies that had never been discussed, yet could immediately and powerfully benefit our client. I was only using the same simple approach: curiosity, openness, and never letting go of the willingness to ask: was there was a better solution here that we missed? Has anything changed that might create an opportunity?

Once again, I was often successful, but again I found that no matter how many times this approach helped our side, it was never encouraged. I got used to seeing work that I had been discouraged from pursuing become pillars of our litigation strategy, even as I continued to be discouraged from being thoughtfully engaged in our client’s matter.

In my career I never found a culture, or even an appreciation of this kind of actively client-focused, thoughtful, blue-sky lawyering. I can’t take credit for the way I have chosen to practice law. I was encouraged to practice that way by one (and exactly one) of my law school professors, and I took it to heart early on. I also can’t say that it ever felt like I was doing anything unusual. After all, why train your brain if you’re not going to use it? Plus, even if I had wanted to, I don’t think I could have broken the mental habit of continually re-examining the situation to see if there might be something our side had missed.

This is why I finally decided to start The Philanthropy Law Firm. I had enjoyed a career that included headline-generating mergers and multimillion-dollar litigation. I had also simultaneously been deeply involved in the nonprofit sector, and I wanted bring the highest standards of my profession to clients who are working to create a real social good, and to see they they have access to the absolute best outcomes that circumstances allow.

-Stephen Kelly, Founder, The Philanthropy Law Firm