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

Hi Lerae, thanks for joining us today. Looking back at the decisions you made early in your career, particularly whether to join a firm or start your own, do you feel you made the right choice for that stage of your career?

I graduated law school from Howard University School of Law in the top 15% of my class. Having an interest in entertainment law, I decided to begin my legal career in Los Angeles, California. First passing the California bar, then moving to California a year later when I attended Chapman University School of Law. There, I earned my LL.M in Entertainment and Media Law and Transactions at Chapman Law. I received extensive drafting and negotiating training from top-notch industry professionals, particularly in the areas of music and film. While at Chapman, I participated in a legal film clinic where we represented independent film production companies, doing everything from setting up the business entities to drafting all of the necessary contracts for the above the line and below the line players.

Out of my desire to cater to my growing family and gain more experience in the music industry, I transitioned my life to the Atlanta area. Upon returning back to Atlanta, I was blessed to have the opportunity to work for the veteran entertainment lawyer whom I greatly admired from afar while I was in law school. As his entertainment law firm specializes in music law, I had the honor and pleasure of gaining one-on-one training and experience working with him.

Our working relationship had the added benefit of allowing me to prioritize being a mother first. He understood that for me, motherhood came first, and we worked it out. I was able to take some time off to be a stay at home with my son, and study for the Georgia bar (which I was hoping to avoid taking by way of reciprocity after 5 years – no such luck). Once I passed the Georgia bar, I started my own practice, picking up an assortment of cases in various areas of the law, most notably entertainment law and juvenile defense. After the birth of my daughter, I made a conscious decision to focus mainly on entertainment law, business law, IP law, and estate planning.

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 am the proud mother of a 9-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter. I am the founder and managing partner at Funderburg Law, LLC. Funderburg Law is a boutique law firm that specializes in copyrights and trademark law, business law, IP law, and estate planning.

Believe it or not, I always wanted to be a teacher – an elementary school teacher in fact. If I’m being completely honest, it took me a long time to find my way in the legal arena. I mean, I look great on paper (ask about me), but personality wise, I never felt like the law was a good fit for me. I’m not really a fan of other lawyers, the Type A personalities, the egos, the firm culture… I just could not be bothered. It wasn’t until I went through a journey of sorts and started working on being my authentic self in all settings that things started to work out. The glow up was real. I found my groove – I could incorporate my love for education and teaching, by being a professor of law to my clients.

I began to understand that while I’m not for everybody (definitely an acquired taste), there are plenty of people that gravitate toward me because I am exactly their style. Most of those people happen to be black mothers and black women, partly because I am a black woman and mother, but the other part is that our backgrounds and experiences are not that different. And I am personable – most of my clients turn into great friends and vice versa. People love being able to be open and transparent with their attorney with no fear of judgment, while also feeling secure that their matters will be handled with professionalism and efficiency.

Outside of my practice, when I’m not with my babies, I spend a lot of time reading and at the spa. I love, love, looooooove the spa. Over the past year or so, I have made a total commitment to personal development. I’ve managed to reach some levels of success in life without really trying because I had this internal fear of failure. I figured if I didn’t try, then I wouldn’t fail, because I didn’t try. It wasn’t until I said that statement out loud to myself that I realized just how dumb it actually sounded. At that moment, I made a change to try – to show up as the best version of myself every day, especially on the days where it seemed impossible or futile. I’m definitely still a work in progress and getting deeper into my meditation and zen lifestyle, but it truly makes the difference for me in being able to run a law practice, be a mom, a daughter, sister, and friend.

I also serve on the Board of Directors for Girls of Excellence, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides supportive services for girls aged 8-18.

My interest in estate planning began in law school, where I received the highest grade in the course. Studying for the Georgia bar, and working with an Atlanta based estate planning attorney renewed my interest in estate planning but having children of my own is truly what made it an area of passion for my practice.

I wanted to learn how to draft my own estate plan to care for my loved ones upon my death or incapacitation. I found myself studying wills, trusts and estates like crazy – attending continuing legal education classes on the subject, reading everything I could get my hands on, networking for mentors, until finally I attended the Institute of Business and Finance and took an estate planning specialist certification course.

At that point, the information was pretty much review, but that was the affirmation I needed to confidently represent clients in the subject matter. I am inspired by educating my community on estate planning, because most of us don’t even know what it is, or we have misconceptions about whether we need it or not. We do! And that’s where I come in!

Even though I have 10 years of legal experience, I still consider my practice to be in its foundational stage. There is still so much that I hope to develop and achieve for my practice and my clients, that it makes me feel like there is still so much left to do!

My goal is to be the go-to trademark and business law firm for black and brown people. I want to help those who are unfamiliar with copyright and trademark laws and ensure that they are not taken advantage of due to their lack of knowledge of the laws, and policies.

In addition, I want to help every person with a business idea and the work ethic and discipline to make it happen, create a profitable and sustainable business. And lastly, I want to help fellow black entrepreneurs secure their legacies by developing estate plans to provide generational wealth for their families for years to come.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy that helped me most in growing my clientele was simply being authentically me, and I built my audience around that. It wasn’t until later that my followers realized that I was an attorney, and it was all up from there.

I like to share with my audience the truths of who I am as a person. My profession just happens to be a service that many people need. I try to be as transparent as possible with my audience so that they can see that lawyers are still everyday people when we put down the contracts or step out of the courtrooms. I learned that while legal information is helpful to share with your audience, they still want to see who YOU are outside of all of the legal talk.

Then there’s the content that I provide that my audience seems to enjoy. I offer monthly masterclasses on topics such as contracts, copyrights, and trademarks. I have an email list where I send out regular content on various topics pertaining to our practices so that I am nurturing them weekly with content. Through our email blasts and social media, we offer discounts for some of our services, provide alternatives to working with me through my other brand – Lawyer Mommy Lerae – which offers a more affordable option for my audience, and sometimes we even offer free resources because if the free content is good, it will leave them wondering what the paid services are like.

And because marketing is key, I even took it upon myself to get certified as a marketing specialist and take classes on marketing so that I can keep up with the everchanging evolution of marketing. In all, just being consistent with the marketing plan, never giving up, and even collaborating with people in complimentary, but not competing businesses, have also been helpful in my marketing endeavors. Not to mention, it helps that I am my target audience so there is a lot of relatability to other Black women, mothers, entrepreneurs, aged 35-55 that are into wellness.

This is what has worked for me.

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses.

No, I have never bought another company, or merged with another company. However, I have recently been propositioned to become a partner at a larger firm. I’ve always enjoyed working for myself, on my own terms, but the offer that has been presented to me has me seriously considering the offer.

The firm that has propositioned me practices in the fields that I do, plus they are well-versed in other practices that I have been focusing on, specifically, the cannabis industry. Not to mention, by partnering with them, I can still keep my firm and clients, and get some of the work that is coming in from people inquiring on their site. They have an IT department that would help with lots of the things that I spend hours, sometimes, trying to figure out. They are willing to work with me so that I can bring my assistant with me, and overall just eliminate a lot of the smaller work that consumes much of my time so that I can really focus on my practice itself and continue to bring money through the door.

I have met with some of the partners, and I will say that they are an interesting bunch of attorneys, but ironically I felt like it would be a place where I would we openly welcomed at, in addition to the fact that one of the partners told me when we met at a conference that he had been watching me for a while and had been waiting on the opportunity to speak with me. Kind of flattering, right?

So right now, we are still in the negotiation stage. We have to talk numbers next, and from there we will see if the dollars make sense.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.funderburglaw.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/officiallawyermommy
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FunderburgLawLLC/
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/leraefunderburg
• Other: www.lawyermommylerae.com www.elevatelegally.com

Image Credits
Photographer: Nick Nelson, @Brandprenuer