Online service links lawyers and businesses

Partners in a startup business expanding its reach into Westchester County this winter and former classmates at Yale Law School, Mirra Levitt and Basha Frost Rubin, were in Washington, D.C. last month on a recruiting and marketing trip when they spoke by phone with the Business Journal. They think Prior Legal L.L.C., their online service that matches businesses with lawyers, can help other small companies make good choices that won”™t break their budgets when hiring an attorney.

Levitt, who has worked in corporate law in Manhattan since graduating in 2010 from law school, said she saw an unmet need during her student work in Yale”™s legal clinics. While “amazing” clinical programs are in place for low-income and impoverished persons who cannot afford any lawyer, “It”™s much harder for people in the middle to figure out who they should be working with, which lawyer or not, and what they should be paying,” she said.

She and Rubin tested and last September launched their Manhattan-based company”™s online platform to meet that need in the business sector. Starting in New York City and Long Island, they recently expanded into Westchester and are also targeting the upstate Albany, Syracuse and Buffalo markets as what Priori Legal CEO Basha Frost Rubin called “hotbeds of entrepreneurial activity.”

The company offers a select network of state-licensed lawyers with at least five years of experience and confirmed malpractice insurance. They are personally interviewed and screened by an attorney on Priori Legal”™s staff.

“The platform is very easy to use,” Levitt said. It simplifies what can be a daunting task and decision for a business owner in New York, which has nearly 164,000 active and resident lawyers, according to the Priori Legal website.

The co-founders said about 80 lawyers had joined the network as of mid-January and about 40 more were going through the screening process.

As for businesses using the service, “We’re in the hundreds at this point,” Rubin said. “We have a couple hundred signed up” on the Priori Legal website.

Levitt said lawyers invited to join the new network contractually agree to provide their services to clients at a minimum 25 percent discount on their normal billing rates. Businesses that hire a lawyer in the online network pay a 10 percent management fee to Priori Legal for fixed-fee legal services. For lawyers charging a range of discounted hourly billing rates through Priori, the company charges a fee “in the neighborhood of 10 percent,” Levitt said.

Rubin said their business model differs from competing online services that connect clients with lawyers in that Priori handles all billings and payments through its site, “managing the process from the first search through the last payment.” Lawyers relieved of some back-office costs by Priori are better able to charge discount rates, the partners noted.

Levitt said the network “really runs the gamut” of attorneys. “We have a lot of solo and small business practices” at 15-person to 50-person firms. Those joining the network at firms tend to be associates rather than partners, she said.

The partners indicated that Priori”™s relationship with firms is still evolving. “It”™s really a call for the individual firm” as to whether to allow an attorney to offer services through the online network, Rubin said.

Levitt said businesses signing up for the service have not come from any one particular industry. “We really see this as a service for clients who are developing multiple legal relationships” and want to shop for legal services at affordable prices.

The partners traveled to the nation”™s capital to meet with lawyers and prospective businesses as they prepare to expand their service into Washington and other Eastern Seaboard markets over the next several months.

Rubin said Priori”™s expansion into Westchester will allow lawyers here to compete with New York City attorneys for online clients. “It”™s a vibrant county, so we”™re really excited to bring Priori there,” she said.