Helping the Modern B2B Attorney and Their Clients Through Flat-Fee Legal

Auxana is an innovative “legal practice in-a-box” for attorneys who want to run their own businesses, but feel apprehensive about leaving the imagined “safety net” of a traditional firm. We provide the business resources that your individual practice needs, while providing an opportunity to reorganize your practice with the intent of gaining actual work-life balance. Auxana’s innovative platform connects members with prospective business clients who need predictable legal services by way of outsourced general counsel. 

We’re here to help kick-start your own legal practice, connecting you to new prospective clients and partners, as well as help support a  model that focuses on predictable, recurring income. Why do we do what we do? Well, it all starts with the desire to kill the billable hour and implement a more intelligent use of resources.

 

The Time Has Come to Kill the Billable Hour

Tracking time in minute increments has never been fun for either client or attorney. “Billing time for simple conversations, listening to voicemails, and reading emails never made sense to me,” says Auxana CEO Beth Lebowitz. “Once the billable hour was gone, the attorney-client relationship became something very different to me and, I believe, my clients”.

The fact is, the billable hour requirements that most law firms practice incentivize flawed work ethics that don’t support the needs of growing companies. Attorneys are groomed to bill as many hours as possible, vs. efficient, technology-backed processes, and these ideas are often at odds with one another.

These misaligned economic incentives mean that those who “succeed” often find it increasingly difficult to have authentic relationships with clients, while also sacrificing a life outside of work. It also means that your success becomes tied to your time instead of your actual value, which only diminishes a client-centric practice.

The reality is that this is not the only way to run a legal practice. We know you’ve been taught to mitigate risk in all things. Rest assured that killing the billable hour isn’t as risky as it may sound. It’s completely possible to work with clients based on your value and their needs, improving the attorney-client relationship, and bringing a sense of pride back to your practice. 

Ditching the billable hour is critical to becoming a strategic and valuable legal partner to growing and middle market companies. The Auxana outsourced general counsel model supports what matters most to scaling companies with day-to-day legal needs, including:

  • The ability to budget for legal spend
  • Reducing inefficient legal spend
  • Quick turn-around time and SLAs
  • Counsel with knowledge of company culture, product, technology, systems
  • Risk tolerance profile and strategic guidance

 

Work-Life Balance Shouldn’t Be a Pipe Dream

The traditional law firm model is challenging for many practicing attorneys, most of whom are burning the candle at both ends. Spending hours tied to an office worried about that billable hour quota has left attorneys feeling both worn-out and stressed. We hear from these attorneys every day that they wish they could have more balance, and are searching for various wellness and mindfulness strategies. However, most don’t think it’s possible in order to achieve their career goals. The bittersweet punchline is that having better work-life balance actually makes you a better attorney, and yes, you can still hit all of your desired professional achievements. 

The fact is, study after study has shown that high stress levels coincide with lower productivity. Stress takes up a lot of space in our minds, leaving little room for creative thinking, problem solving, and motivation. The more work that piles up, the more stress we feel, which is a terrible cycle to be caught in. 

And it isn’t just the attorneys who suffer from low productivity due to work stress. Our clients expect quality work, sound advisement, and expert problem solving from their legal advisor, and they want it in a reasonable amount of time. The more stressed an attorney feels, the harder it is for them to deliver any and all of those things. This not only causes tension with clients and internal stakeholders, but it can also make you, the attorney, feel even worse.

For most of us, having meaningful time with family and friends, hobbies, travel, and other personal enjoyment, is part of the reason we work so hard. Even the most staunch workaholics have a soft spot for something outside of work that they use as an escape. This approach to work-life balance is something that CEO Beth Lebowitz doesn’t just preach, but actually practices. “Baked into the Auxana Outsourced GC model is a fundamental belief that we can all be entrepreneurial, and we can maintain flexible work and personal time that best suits each individual schedule. I do not believe in 9-to-5 or M-to-F, but I do believe that attorneys should control their schedules and work in a way that provides a better, more responsive, and flexible service for their clients and for their personal lives”. 

If you want to bring your best to your work, you need to experience downtime that makes you genuinely happy. Most importantly, the mindfulness you cultivate will carry with you when you engage with clients, which makes you someone they want to keep working with and refer others too. That means your reputation and practice grows by word of mouth. When you’re the attorney that shows up with 100% every time, delivers high-quality work, provides exceptional problem solving and advisement — you’re the attorney everyone wants to do business with.

 

Embrace Your Entrepreneurial Spirit

The desire to launch your own business is often stifled by the seemingly overwhelming litany of “things to do” to get started. While I would never claim that venturing out to a solo practice isn’t without its own set of complexities, it certainly shouldn’t be a deal-breaker.

Complete with vetted tools, marketing and advertising campaigns, access to potential leads, peer collaboration, support, education, partner resources, and a predictable revenue model via flat-fee monthly billing, Auxana provides much of what’s needed in order to kick-start your own practice as an outsourced General Counsel. We want you to find success in your own legal practice, on your terms. Considering the amount of intelligence and vigor that goes into becoming an attorney, you deserve control over the way your time is spent, as well as the types of projects, cases and clients you bring on. 

Launching your business (or even your side-hustle) as an Auxana GC allows you to be in the driver’s seat of your own career, giving you the ability to make decisions based on what fits best for your interests, schedule, education, and passions.