Three women lawyers with backgrounds in business and familial asset protection have joined forces to create the startup In The Know Legal.
Business attorney Lisa Sigman, law professor Tania Shah and estate attorney Erin Nobles created In The Know Legal to serve the minority community of women pursuing innovative business ideas and start-ups.
Each of the founders attended law school in Boston and immediately fell in love with the entrepreneurial energy in the city. They chose to base their business in Massachusetts for that reason.
“As attorneys, we know that a legal (issue) often is one of the biggest obstacles that small businesses face, but women-owned businesses especially struggle,” Sigman said.
In The Know Legal’s slogan is “No Half-Asset Protection.” The founders say that's because budding entrepreneurs cannot protect businesses without personal protection of wealth.
In The Know Legal is a service that combines business templates with personal legal protection such as powers of attorney, health care proxy appointments, and simple wills.
Each template comes with a corresponding video that walks the user through just how to customize it to their needs and simplifies the legal jargon for clients.
The corresponding videos are included with each template no matter the difference in price paid for the template.
“There’s this myth that legal documents create a divide, but that can’t be further from the truth. Legal documents show that the business owner cares about their relationship with their client and the integrity of their business,” Shah said.
They were incentivized to make In The Know Legal in response to the pandemic leading to high levels of unemployment, particularly among women.
“More women than men are out of work. Moms want to be able to start a business and take care of their children at home. Now is the perfect time for us to do this,” said Shah, who is a faculty member at Western State College of Law at Westcliff University in Irvine, Calif.
Shah is a graduate of Boston University's School of Law, while Sigman and Nobles received their law degrees from Suffolk University.
Sigman, a single mother, said she understands that as women are creating these home-grown businesses out of necessity, In The Know Legal wants to be the reason that they continue to keep these businesses.
“If a legal (document) is a barrier because of time or even the fear of not knowing, we want to be able to answer all of those things for them at their convenience,” Sigman said.
The founders agree that what is most essential to their business is giving women the freedom to dive into it on their own terms.
“The unique opportunity here is to have access to this resource 24 hours a day and having the freedom to learn at your own pace,” Nobles said.
The company was set to launch April 15 but now plans for a May kickoff, online. Shortly after their first launch they plan to release templates for online business owners such as virtual assistants, web designers, and SEO professionals.
Templates start at $79 individually, and template packages start at $329.
