We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Leah Weinberg. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Leah below.

Leah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

I know that the law and working with lawyers can be scary for people, and I also acknowledge that there’s some inherent distrust of lawyers in general. One of our goals with Oduberg is to make the law less scary and for us to feel more approachable than your typical corporate lawyers. And I also want to build trust.

One of the ways we have approached achieving that goal is by infusing hospitality into our law firm, which I can say is definitely unique among other law firms. Both Kunbi and I come from the wedding and events industry, so hospitality is second nature to us. We want our clients to feel taken care of. We want them to feel seen and heard. We want them to feel more protected and confident in their own businesses. As a result, the client experience is paramount to us. I’ve had so many clients come to us saying that they used to work with another attorney but that the person was impossible to get a hold of and never responded either in a timely manner or sometimes at all. I don’t want my clients to ever worry that I’ll never get back to them or that I won’t be reachable if they have something time sensitive.

And being small business owners ourselves and given my experience as a wedding planner, we KNOW what our clients are going through. We know the ins and outs of being an entrepreneur. We know the roller coaster ride that it can be. All of that allows us to connect and serve our clients on a completely different level and in a way that a lot of other law firms can’t.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I like to say that I am currently in my full circle moment. I’ve been an attorney since 2005, starting out my career as a commercial real estate attorney. After realizing that I was destined to have my own business and be my own boss, I took a little detour to start Color Pop Events, a wedding and event planning company in New York City. I made the tough decision to shut down Color Pop at the end of 2022 and started a law firm with a dear friend in January 2023 called Oduberg where we offer general representation for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and creatives.

With Oduberg, I’ve stumbled upon a fantastic niche of working with wedding and event professionals on all of their legal needs. Having been a wedding and event planner for almost a decade, I had the unique opportunity to work with every type of vendor, see their contracts, and understand their businesses. That experience now makes me invaluable to my clients at Oduberg. As many of them say, I just “get it,” and there’s no one with my experience doing this same work. It’s been a really fulfilling shift to now work with friends and colleagues in this new way.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Do you believe in serendipity? I certainly do.

Serendipity is defined as “the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.”

In December 2019, I attended a conference for wedding professionals. During one of the general sessions, I heard the woman sitting in front of me say she was from New York, so I introduced myself. She told me she was an attorney. With nerdy excitement, I told her I was an attorney TOO (well, and a wedding planner). We exchanged contact information, and then I didn’t see her for the rest of the conference.

In January 2020, I reached out to her and we met up in New York City for coffee, promising to keep in touch.

In March 2020, well, I don’t have to tell you what happened then.

A few months after that, I reached back out to see if she needed any paralegal help. I didn’t have any weddings happening, could use the cash flow, and also wasn’t interested in working as a full-blown attorney. Turns out she did need the help, and I spent the next two years drafting a lot of service agreements for wedding vendors who needed a tune up to their contracts post you-know-what.

In January 2023, we launched our law firm together.

I think back to December 2019 and to that brief moment we met. What if either of us hadn’t gone to that conference? What if either of us hadn’t been in that exact seat? What if I hadn’t overheard her say she was from New York? What if the world hadn’t shut down a few months later?

I was chatting with a friend recently and I said something like, who knows whether I could have leveraged all the new connections I had made at that conference and really grown Color Pop if things hadn’t shut down months later. My friend responded with, “but what if meeting Kunbi is exactly WHY you were at that conference?” Whew! And she was right.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I know I keep mentioning this, but the success of Oduberg would not have been possible without my successful career as a wedding planner. During that time, I worked with so many wedding professionals and built a reputation as a reliable and trustworthy wedding planner who was really good at their job. Because trust can be such a gatekeeping item for people when hiring an attorney, I benefit from already having that built-in trust with so many people. So, when they found out that not only do they already know me and trust me, but now I can help them protect their businesses, it’s kind of a no-brainer for them to hire me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://oduberg.com
• Instagram: @theleahweinberg and @oduberglaw
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-weinberg-50655a19/

Image Credits

Syed Yaqeen

Tracy Autem

Syed Yaqeen