Paralegals Should Be Millionaires! How a Rural Paralegal Built a Business and a Movement

Episode Notes

Transcript

Jaclyn Foster:

I started my business in my pajamas with a baby on my lap and greasy hair and negative $200 in my checking account. No reach, no network, nothing. So many paralegals in their subconscious say, who am I to do that? Who are you not to? Who are you not to?

Tony Sipp:

And welcome back to the Paralegal Voice. My name is Tony Sipp and we have an amazing guest with us today. That amazing guest is Jaclyn Foster. Jaclyn Foster is the author of The Paralegals Should Be Millionaires. She’s an entrepreneur and she’s also the founder of the Paralegals and Business Society. Welcome Jaclyn Foster. How are you, Jackie?

Jaclyn Foster:

I’m great. Thank you so much, Tony. It’s really an honor to be here with you today.

Tony Sipp:

Good. It’s so great to have you. I know I missed a little bit, well, a lot bit about you. So can you tell the listeners a little bit more about who you are and what you do?

Jaclyn Foster:

Absolutely. So I’m a paralegal by trade. I mean, I think that goes without saying because I’m on the paralegal.

Tony Sipp:

You never know. You never

Jaclyn Foster:

Know. You never know. It’s just been a while since I’ve done paralegal work, but I was a paralegal by trade. I was a general practic paralegal in rural towns, born and raised in Northern Minnesota. Population, a thousand, very rural area. Yeah. And then I moved to Wisconsin and kind of picked up my scattered paralegal career over here to an even more rural place. And I didn’t think that I could get more rural than Northern Minnesota, but here I am. And when I came here, I was really disheartened and sad to find that there really wasn’t much for litigation firms here. Attorney is a very small town, we talk about it in the legal industry, underserved type of locations for litigation. And so I found myself in a transactional estate planning and real estate law firm, which was fine. Didn’t tickle the itch of litigation that I had or scratch the itch, but it was fine.

Paid the bills for a while until I was about to become a brand new mom. My husband and I were expecting our son. And funny enough, it was in a time of my career that wasn’t feeling as fulfilling as it should have been feeling. And we sat down and kind of looked at what I could make here as a paralegal. And some people drop their jaws when I give the number. Others are like, “Oh yeah, that sounds about right for where I live.” I could make a max of $15 an hour

As a senior level paralegal. See, some drops.

Tony Sipp:

That’s like minimum wage over here. Well, it was, but I’m in

Jaclyn Foster:

California.

Yeah, I mean, low cost of living here, all of that. But then when you start layering on daycare costs and gas because it’s a 30 mile drive one way, my husband and I sat down and we’re like, “By the end of it, what I’m really going to be taking home is about $200 a month working full-time, putting my child in daycare, missing out on the first years of his life, all the exciting moments.” And we really decided that while we needed my income, we couldn’t live on his alone. We were just going to take a leap of faith and I wasn’t going to return from my maternity leave. So we did that.

Tony Sipp:

Okay.

Jaclyn Foster:

All right. And I started scrambling. That’s very Jaclyn vibe. I started scrambling and this was back in 2018. So you can imagine remote jobs were very, very uncommon to come by in the legal field. So I was applying to insurance companies, customer service rep jobs, anything I could do with my baby at home. And lo and behold, came across on a Facebook group, I think it was perfectly paralegal, came across a remote job scheduling IMEs for a law firm in Chicago, a very big insurance defense firm. I didn’t even know what IMEs were. They’re independent medical examinations for anybody who doesn’t. I had to Google it. I’m like, “Oh, that looks pretty administrative. Never did work comp, but I can do it. ” Made 12 bucks an hour as a contractor doing that, but I put a couple hundred dollars back in the grocery table and all the things.

Well, 2018, 2019, I was doing that while raising a child, which is interesting. And throughout that time, and I always wondered in my mind, while I’m contracting through this company, obviously there are firms out there that would hire somebody fractionally from home and anywhere in the country. So I’m like, what if I started my own business and instead of making $12 an hour, I could make 20 would be great. That was where my bar was. Let’s start

Tony Sipp:

There. Yeah. Let’s start there.

Jaclyn Foster:

And so I was thinking about it. I mean, imposter syndrome was so terrible. I didn’t know the first thing about business. I’m like, I’m not that great of a paralegal. I’m a passionate, solution-driven paralegal, but there’s so many more amazing paralegals out there working in California and Minneapolis and all the big cities. I’m like, nobody would hire me anyway. I have to depend on this agency. So it really kept me stuck. But we eventually got to this point as costs of living were rising. Raising a child is expensive. And my hobby of animals was a little bit expensive.

Tony Sipp:

Yeah, I saw that. I love those animals, by the way.

Jaclyn Foster:

That’s

My brand as we were just talking at the beginning, my snoring hound over there. But honestly, we had negative $200 in our checking account. I didn’t have any more room on our credit card except for $200 and something just sparked in me. On March 23rd of 2020, I’m like, I have nowhere to go but up. So people can laugh at me. I could fail. I can never get a client, but I’m going to bet on myself and do it anyway. So really I started my own business in 2020 with a leap of desperation. I never say it was a leap of faith like I can make this work. I believe in myself never. To this day sometimes I doubt, continuously doubt myself.

Tony Sipp:

Necessity. Mother inventors. Right.

Jaclyn Foster:

And so lo and behold, I started that business March of 2020 and not intentionally around the pandemic and everyone’s like,

Tony Sipp:

“Oh, that was it. ” No, I was thinking that too. Yeah. My Virgin

Jaclyn Foster:

Business brain did not connect

Tony Sipp:

That. It would be a

Jaclyn Foster:

Big boom of

Tony Sipp:

Virtual marketing.

Jaclyn Foster:

Yeah, no idea.

Tony Sipp:

Everything.

Jaclyn Foster:

I posted a crappy blog on my LinkedIn, never had a LinkedIn before, just threw up a quick website, filed the LLC with my remaining $200 on my credit card and I got a bite from a client. Funny enough, that client was out in California and asked me to draft a complex motion for compassionate release in the Eastern Federal District of California, two things I have never done on a legal issue of COVID, which has zero precedence. And I’m like, I told the attorney, I don’t actually have experience in California or federal, no idea if we’re going to do … But it worked and I got my first client way undercharged myself. I think I had about 60 hours of work into this complex motion and the response and I think I charged him $500.

Tony Sipp:

That is cheap. Right.That’s his bill for one hour.

Jaclyn Foster:

Exactly. Exactly. But it was such an experience and a confidence boost where I was like, I got one client, maybe I can get another, maybe I can get another. And so just kept posting online, reaching into networks. I eventually into that summer got on podcasts and everything just started to waterfall. And fast forward, because I’ll wrap up my story here, is I ultimately ended up in my first year becoming a six-figure paralegal living in the middle of nowhere, Wisconsin, having been making $12 to … You can imagine, I was like, “What do I do with this money?”

Tony Sipp:

Buy more animals.

Jaclyn Foster:

Yeah. And then I just got an itch. I was working with so

Tony Sipp:

Many

Jaclyn Foster:

Different attorneys in different states and different practice areas. That’s where that general practice kind of helped me out. I really started to love the conversations I was having with them about their staffing and scaling their firms. And I’m like, I don’t want to stop here. I love paralegal work. I could honestly see myself doing it as a hobby in my retirement continuously. It’s fun for me, but I wanted to scale. So I started bringing other paralegals into my business that fall and was like, okay, we’re doing the thing. And so three years later I hit a $500,000 revenue year in my paralegal business, Little Wisconsin and ultimately ended up selling it. I sold my company to a larger known VA company called Virtual.

They offer VA services, things like that and they wanted to add a legal arm. Nice. So sold my company, fully transitioned out of it now and I’m like, “What do I do now? I don’t want to start another agency. I don’t want to go back. I don’t know what to do now.” And I’m like, “Where does my passion live?” Throughout all of that, I had dabbled in coaching other paralegals, helping them start businesses more so to broaden my own network of other paralegals for my agency to match up my attorneys. And I really found a passion for it. The single mom that reaches out to me and says, “Your course changed my life. I am able to stay home with my baby or anybody or I was in between jobs, the market’s terrible, couldn’t make…” It all just was a passion for me, something I could truly say.

And I know most people say if I didn’t have to work, what would I do? Nobody really wants to work even if they’re passionate about it, but I genuinely love it. And so I decided I’m going to take a leap of faith again. Now it’s a leap of faith instead of desperation, which is kind of cool. And I started the Paralegals and Business Society, really didn’t treat it like a business back when I had my course running in this, but this is truly a movement that I’ve been a big part of and I self-proclaimed leader of more paralegals entering entrepreneurship, watching the industry change from within that I’m like, we need to formalize it. We need to make something big and bold and so wildly accessible to paralegals that it’s almost insane. I priced it at 9.99 a month and paralegals in there. Within two months, we have about 250 paralegals in there starting their businesses.

Some are in the early launch phase, some are just designing, some have already started a need to get more clients. It’s just an incredible community and now I’m like, I’m committed. This has been so fun. And the paralegals and Business Society is now my full-time mission work, if you will. I

Tony Sipp:

Love that story. That is the best story. That’s so great. Great way to open up our episode here. Let’s take a quick break and we’re going to talk about some of these forces that you discovered behind our legal industry that are creating opportunities for paralegals. I want to be freelance paralegals that want to pivot. We’ll be right back. And welcome back to The Paralegal Voice. My name is Tony Sip. I’m here with Jaclyn Foster. We’re talking about some of the shifts that Jaclyn has seen. Jaclyn, can you tell us, because it seems like with a lot of changes in the legal field and our political environment and the environment that there’s a lot of entrepreneurs coming out, a lot of self-start. It’s kind of like what you did out of desperation, created something really beautiful out of it. So are you also seeing kind of a shift of more people doing what you did going the freelance style or independent or starting to pivot and start something new?

Jaclyn Foster:

Yeah, absolutely. It is. And it’s actually bigger than that. I believe that it is a entire change of the paralegal profession as a whole. So we go back to COVID and I know everybody’s like, “We’re sick of hearing about it. That’s old news,” but it truly was a milestone moment for the legal industry. And here’s why. I agree. Attorneys, and we all know this, law is tradition to the weird words that we use and try to learn how to pronounce the Greek stuff to the accordion files and some courthouse is still behind on e-filing and all the things. We are so, I don’t want to say outdated, but we’re so stuck in tradition. And COVID basically forced law firms, figure it out. You have to figure out how to be productive from home. You have to figure out your systems. Are you still saving things on your desktop?

If you are, not really sure how your people are going to stay productive without being in the office. Things like that started to really-

Tony Sipp:

A lot of firms had to close. They had to close because they couldn’t handle the shift. They couldn’t go remote and either they merged or they failed.

Jaclyn Foster:

Exactly. And what happened then too, and I’m trying not to scroll down this rabbit hole, but I also worked in some full-time employment staffing within my agency for a little while, just trying to see if I could add that as a service line. And what we found in the employee market too shifted, and we all remember that it was a heavy employees market for the longest time it still kind of is because big law, bigger firms, mid-size firms even that had it together swooped in and said, “We’re ready. We’ll hire you while you’re furloughed. We’ll give you better-” Exactly. So through the paralegal industry and the associate attorney industry, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. The paralegal industry went upside down for a while there. And backing up even further, freelancing has been anything for decades. I personally know paralegals in my space that have been freelancing since the ’90s.

So it’s always been there, but it has never truly been a common wide open door for paralegals. The industry looked at freelancing as not a real job, side gig, add supplemental income, get you buy in between jobs, just

Tony Sipp:

Nothing

Jaclyn Foster:

Sustainable, nothing legit, you’re just kind of picking up work. And so that’s where the industry was. And it was starting to sort of evolve. Obviously I stepped into subcontracting in 2018, but then 2020 is when freelancers were really getting swooped up because these firms were losing their employees on furlough to bigger firms and they didn’t have the budget to compete with these big salaries being offered, unlimited PTO, great benefits. So they’re starting these attorneys solo, small, even mid-size trying to grow the firm

We’re finding, okay, well, all these paralegals, some paralegals are starting to want to freelance full-time and there’s these agencies that are stepping into it. They’re seeing the boom of legal process outsourcing. It’s accessible to us now and we’ve figured out the technology to make remote work happen. So they started bringing in paralegals in a fractional capacity, which at the time was just to get people by, get the firms by until they learned and they can’t unlearn it, they can’t unsee it. Wow, this is actually a really sustainable way to grow my law firm in between my big leaps of making employee hires for the people that I really need. And so through that, the attorneys, this is what’s funny, Tony. The attorneys almost accepted paralegals being independent and running businesses, if you will, faster than the paralegals themselves did. And I’m still combating that out in the field like, oh, freelancing, you have to have 20 plus years of experience.

You heard my story, did I? No.

Tony Sipp:

No. Yeah. There’s so many people I’ve spoken to that have either just got out of paralegal school or very limited experience in school and have created masterful careers out for themselves. It’s amazing.

Jaclyn Foster:

It’s

Tony Sipp:

Amazing. It is

Jaclyn Foster:

Amazing. It is amazing. So now here we are and this is where the industry, like I said, the attorneys have already accepted it. They’re now getting even smarter, especially the solos, the small firms that have limited resources to say, “We’re hiring 10 more paralegals this year.” We have it in the budget. They don’t. So they’re getting even smarter about now we have AI and different tools and efficiency things and case managements and consultants and they can hire a fractional CFO, Leah Miller. They can hire fractional support. They’re getting even smarter about it now where they say, “I don’t just need another set of hands fractionally to do a little bit of admin and a little bit of drafting and a little bit of filing. We want to specifically solve a discovery bottleneck. Who can we hire to do that? ” So paralegals are now able to be at the forefront for my example of saying, “I’m going to specialize in discovery.

I’m going to specialize in legal admin, executive function, that type of support where they may be lacking. The paralegals need the extra support in firm.” So they’re able to really get in their lane, start service companies, productize, whether flat fee or hourly service companies and solve very specific problems for a variety of law firm demographics, locations, et cetera. So door’s wide open. Door

Tony Sipp:

Is

Jaclyn Foster:

Wide open now more than ever.

Tony Sipp:

So win-win for both parties. We had the great resonation. So you had this talent pool that just left, retired or stopped working, creating opportunities for others where so happily you were able to jump in, take advantage of those opportunities and you’re seeing other people do the same thing. And as we’re starting to shift and the legal industry is starting to shift and AI is becoming almost like a great equalizer and making smaller firms as great as the resources available to larger firms. Yeah, there’s room for growth. There’s room for opportunity in there and you’re creating a whole ecosystem for the paralegals to jump in and find their space. I think that’s great. That’s great. That’s exactly

Jaclyn Foster:

What

Tony Sipp:

I’m doing. Yeah. So you understood the legal side because I mean, that’s where you started and then the business side seems falling on you and then you embraced it. So now that this is a new skill that you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t study for this. ” Kind of like with the paper that was a complex litigation, how’d you overcome these obstacles? What did you do? I mean, clearly the internal dialogue that you’re having with yourself is very positive and very like, you can do it, but what would you encourage others to do that may not have that same internal dialogue that’s happening?

Jaclyn Foster:

Sure. Yeah. And I mean the way I learned business was by piecemealing information from other industries because restating that it just wasn’t common for paralegals to go and start businesses, there wasn’t a person like me out there giving the roadmap, giving the, this is what you have to think about. And so I had piecemeal information from YouTube or blogs or this and that on general VA services or general business mentalities and books here and there. But I always knew because of my legal background like, oh, that will not work with firms. That will not work with attorneys. That advice will not work. That marketing strategy, they will not listen to it. So I had to pair my industry knowledge and having worked with attorneys to that information. And so going back to the society, that’s why I priced it so cheap is because so man paralegals will find themselves in the same place.

Most of the people that come into my space, the paralegals that do enter my whatever, my podcast, anything, don’t actually believe that they could be successful, but they’re curious. And so they’re not ready to invest or go all in or this or that. So I didn’t want them to feel like they had to go my route of trying to piecemeal information all over the place.

So that was where that price point came in making it accessible to all paralegals that want to explore or just see what it’s all about. And so that and also the other thing with business that I have learned is it’s truly try, fail, try, fail, try, fail, try succeed. And it’s little micro moments like that. It really is. Having an attorney try to steal a paralegal from me and then learning, oh, I don’t have no hire clauses in my contract. Learn

Tony Sipp:

That.

Jaclyn Foster:

Learning from experience of unfortunate events.

Tony Sipp:

A series of unfortunate events.

Jaclyn Foster:

Yeah. And like marketing, all the things with marketing. How do you reach attorneys? I mean, we know we’re paralegals. It’s hard to get them to open emails from their paralegal. Yes. Let alone. Emails from people pitching them. It’s very, very slim chance. And so learning, okay, what is the appropriate marketing lane for law firms? And where can I access them and how can I graze credibility? And so just a lot

Tony Sipp:

Of

Jaclyn Foster:

Failing and learning over the five years of running businesses.

Tony Sipp:

I love this and we could talk forever. Let’s take a quick break. I’m going to ask you a few rapid fire questions on the other side of this break, so we’ll be right back. And welcome back to The Paralegal Voice. I’m here with the illustrious Jaclyn Foster. Jaclyn, we are going to play around a fun round of quickfire questions. Are you ready?

Jaclyn Foster:

I am ready.

Tony Sipp:

All right. Jaclyn, what is your favorite paralegal superpower that doesn’t get enough credit?

Jaclyn Foster:

Solutions, finding solutions. So across everything in my life from being a paralegal to designing a business, to being a mom, to fixing problems for my husband internally, being a solution-based thinker never lets you get stuck in the, “I can’t figure this out mode.” There is always a way to figure it out and paralegals are the best at doing that. So that is

Tony Sipp:

Absolutely- Say that one more time. I didn’t hear it.

Jaclyn Foster:

Paralegals are the best at doing that louder for the people in the ba.

Tony Sipp:

Louder, louder. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. All right. Next question. The most unrated tool or habit that saves your day.

Jaclyn Foster:

Probably the tools that I am really bad at using. So if I actually put my to- do list in a system, I gain so much brain power back, but I’m really bad at committing to that.

Tony Sipp:

I’m laughing because I have been trying to figure out a system that works for me. I’ve been going on YouTube watching all these things and setting up alerts, setting up alarms only to snooze them or miss them completely. I just didn’t even hear it. I’m like, oh God, what was that for? I don’t know. So I completely appreciate that. So thank you for sharing that. Number three, what does winning look like for a paralegal in 2026?

Jaclyn Foster:

I think being in their zone of genius that not only they are encouraged and excited and not waking up with stomach ulcers because they don’t want to go to their job and they have choices out of that. I think winning is that paralegals now have options, choices, different career ladders, different business ladders that they can climb. Paralegals deserve options and that’s what we need to start seeing and it is happening. So that’s cool.

Tony Sipp:

That is very cool. First thing you’ll do, number four, first thing you’ll do. If you had to rebuild your business from scratch tomorrow, how about that?

Jaclyn Foster:

First thing I would do?

Tony Sipp:

Yeah.

Jaclyn Foster:

I would sit down with a pen and paper and I would write three things. What problem is my business going to solve and what result does that problem being solved give the person needing it to be solved? So problem solution equals what is the outcome? And I would design everything off of that.

Tony Sipp:

Well said. Thank you. A boundary you learned the hard way.

Jaclyn Foster:

Work-life balance in business working from home. And I shouldn’t say work-life balance because I have work-life harmony, which is amazing. I’m in my house right now. What a way to

Tony Sipp:

Say that. That’s nice. Yeah.

Jaclyn Foster:

My kids come and go and I can just work through it, but really like a boundary simply shutting my emails off at night, not going, because social media to me is part of my business.

Tony Sipp:

Don’t

Jaclyn Foster:

Go on social media. That checkoff period of I’m fully done being business Jaclyn and now I’m horse Jaclyn, mom.

Tony Sipp:

I saw you drag that, was this sheep out of the, was it goat or something? Bob. I was dying. I’m like, is this a day in your life? Bob. Bob has an attitude.

Jaclyn Foster:

Hours and so much money into building a high fence for him and he still escapes.

Tony Sipp:

Got it. And

Jaclyn Foster:

Beats my garden. He’s awful, but we love Bob. Oh,

Tony Sipp:

We love Bob. Bob, you got to do more of Bob. He’s such a Bob. What about Bob? Yeah. I love about it. All right. Let’s go to number six. The best advice you ever got about money or pricing.

Jaclyn Foster:

Value-based pricing. And

That is so hard because paralegals, for instance, they think about their worth based on what the employee market is telling them it is. But when you switch that around what your worth is and what your pricing is, especially in business because you control it and there’s obviously reasons for ROI for attorneys to hire you is you are charging based on what they’re making off of what they pay you. So it’s a flip. Whereas the paralegal industry, it’s more, give me three times your salary back in revenue. That’s all gone. So you get to purely base your pricing and your value off of what that attorney is receiving back to them, which is usually over a hundred percent at a $70 rate. So it’s a little different, right?

Tony Sipp:

Just a little bit. Just a little bit. I love it. I love it. Number seven, a non-negotiable for working with law firms.

Jaclyn Foster:

As in a personal boundary or-

Tony Sipp:

Let it be what you want.

Jaclyn Foster:

Non-negotiable for working law. Not every attorney is your ideal client or employer. So for instance, paralegals will start businesses and they’ll get on a discovery call and that attorney will tell them, “Oh, that’s out of my budget. I’m not paying it. ” And then they’ll recoil and say, “I better discount my pricing,” versus looking at it as that attorney doesn’t see the ROI. It’s not there for them, but my person is out there. Lawyers are good at negotiating or trying to flip scripts on you or make you analyze your pricing. I don’t deal with it a ton anymore because I lead the charge when I’m talking to attorneys now, but they will sometimes do that. So holding true to your value and what you’ve put a price on that for.

Tony Sipp:

I like that. Holding true to your value. Number eight, what’s something you believe about the profession that most people disagree with for now?

Jaclyn Foster:

Well, I think that goes without saying that paralegals should be millionaires. That’s my book.

Tony Sipp:

I guess that was a layoff. I wasn’t going that direction, but that’s a layup. That’s an easy one. All right. That’s good. If your book title were TED Talk title, what would the subtitle be?

Jaclyn Foster:

Defining her law and her career or something like that. Writing the laws of your own career.

Tony Sipp:

I like it. I like it. And you are doing that. Number 10, one phrase you wish paralegals would stop saying about themselves.

Jaclyn Foster:

It goes to business. So if somebody said, if they have a thought in their mind, a flicker of a thought of, “I’d love to start a business,” so many paralegals in their subconscious say, “Who am I to do that? ” And it’s like, who are you not to? I always want paralegals to remember, and if this is the last thing I say on your podcast, it’s important. I started my business in my pajamas with a baby on my lap and greasy hair and negative $200 in my checking account, no reach, no network, nothing. If anybody should have said, who am I to do that? It was that version of myself and I did it. There are brilliant people out there, paralegals, legal assistants. Who are you not to? Who are you not to?

Tony Sipp:

Let’s say proud. Yes, that is how you end an episode epically. Jaclyn Foster, thank you for being our guest. If people want to reach you, I know you have a lot of different methods of reaching you. What is the best way for people to get in contact with you?

Jaclyn Foster:

Yeah, absolutely. So you can check on my website, Jaclynfoster.com. That has all my LinkedIn, my socials. I’m mostly active on LinkedIn for my social media accounts, so come say hello over there. But otherwise, yeah, getting into Paralegals and Business Society, that’s my podcast that’s all found through Jaclynfoster.com and I hope to welcome you inside.

Tony Sipp:

You are an amazing individual, amazing person. I’m so honored to have met you and being able to have you as a guest and be able to interact with you. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and your passion with us.

Jaclyn Foster:

Absolutely. Thank you, Tony, for having me.

Tony Sipp:

And thank you every one for listening to this episode of Paralegal Voice. We’ll see you next time. Have a wonderful day.

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