My LinkedIn pro­file and blog above will tell you about my skills and give you a fla­vor of my per­son­al­ity. But skills and per­son­al­ity don’t tell you the whole story. Here are the prin­ci­ples I try to fol­low as I prac­tice law:

Call­ing in Life

I believe that every­one has a call­ing in life. It takes a lot of hard work, prayer, and search­ing to find that call­ing. When you do find that call­ing, your life changes. I’m here to help small busi­ness own­ers ful­fill their calling.

The Heart of a Teacher

I heard some­one once say that they look for peo­ple who have the heart of a teacher rather than the heart of a sales­per­son. A teacher serves; whereas a sales­man makes sales. The teacher focuses on the cus­tomer. The sales­man focuses on the sale. My aim is to teach small busi­ness own­ers about the law, legal risks and options.

Alaska

I’m a big fan of Alaska. I’ve lived here for over 14 years. My wife was born here. Her grand­par­ents moved here in 1949. I think it’s the great­est place in the world to raise a fam­ily. I want to do my part for Alaska. I’ve con­cluded that the best way to do this is to help Alaska’s local small busi­nesses and their own­ers achieve their call­ing in life.

Small Busi­nesses

I believe in self-reliance. I believe that our nation was built on the prin­ci­pal of self-reliance. The small busi­ness owner is the epit­ome of self-reliance. Small busi­ness are built by peo­ple who know the value of hard work, risk, and rewards. Some of my favorite peo­ple are small busi­ness owners.

Design

I’ve always felt that the legal indus­try has done a huge dis­ser­vice to its clients by ignor­ing design. I asked myself: why are legal forms, con­tracts, and legal briefs so dif­fi­cult to under­stand? Why do lawyers just use text? Couldn’t they include videos, info­graph­ics, and graphic design into the doc­u­ments they pro­duce and the laws they write?  There must be a bet­ter way to con­vey dif­fi­cult legal con­cepts to non-lawyers?

I study fonts, color the­ory, type­set­ting, writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, lay­out, etc. to find answers to these ques­tions. I’m imple­ment­ing my con­clu­sions into Vellum.

Inno­va­tion

I don’t know why, but lawyers always seem to be the last group to adopt new tech­nolo­gies. Many lawyers adhere to their old ways at the cost of inef­fi­ciency. The client often pays for these inef­fi­cien­cies. I’m at the other end of the spec­trum. I love new tech­nol­ogy. I keep up with it and adopt it into my prac­tice. For exam­ple, Vel­lum is paper­less. This way I don’t have to main­tain files, my clients can eas­ily access their infor­ma­tion, and I can quickly find what I’m look­ing for. Vel­lum is also devel­op­ing web appli­ca­tions to stream­line legal processes. Vel­lum will always be at the cut­ting edge of innovation.

Lead­er­ship

Some­one once asked me to iden­tify the most impor­tant qual­ity of a leader. I said: humil­ity. I’ve worked with many lead­ers, includ­ing CEOs of large cor­po­ra­tions. The least effec­tive lead­ers are those who feel that they must con­trol things. The most effec­tive lead­ers are those who allow the human spirit to thrive and build trust within those who they lead. I try to imple­ment this qual­ity in the way I nego­ti­ate, the way I draft legal forms, and the way I prac­tice law. This isn’t a mat­ter of weak­ness. I find that those who are most hum­ble are the strongest.