This week meet Andrew Avorn who owns a private practice focusing on providing legal support and guidance to consultants and founders.

You have a ton of industry experience - both at brand name companies and universities. What motivated you to start your own practice to help small businesses and independent consultants?

I was General Counsel for a startup that wasn’t taking off as I had hoped. The company actually laid off the entire executive team, including me.

At first, I was looking for a new in-house legal job, but I needed something to do while I looked, so I started helping friends and people in my network who were starting companies. I soon realized that I much preferred being my own boss, so eventually I stopped looking for jobs and focused only on building my practice.

How did you go about defining your niche?

My niche found me! Working as the General Counsel of a startup, I developed a wide area of knowledge about the day to day work that emerging companies need for legal work. After I left and started representing startups on my own, I refined my practice in the handful of areas that keep coming up--contracts, equity, VC financing, employment, etc. There are a lot of different areas, but the same issues come up over and over.

We have a lot of people in our community who are just starting their consulting businesses. If you could give one piece of advice that can save them a lot of legal headaches, what will it be?

Get an LLC! It makes you look more professional and limited liability protection might save you one day. (As always, I’m not your lawyer yet, so this is not legal advice, but feel free to reach out to me if you want to chat).