We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Max Hass a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Max, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?
Corporate law firms get a lot of things wrong, from my perspective. One of the biggest areas is the notion of the traditional law-office model for delivery of legal services. Nearly 50% of attorneys in the U.S. are actually solo practitioners, and there are so many ways to practice law and deliver legal services to clients that expand access to justice and resources, which the corporate version of law just doesn’t reach. My firm, Holon Law Partners, focuses on delivering the quality of legal service and caliber of attorney that would be found at large, corporate firms, while offering lots of flexibility – in how we meet with clients, how we bill for our services, how we strike a work-life balance for ourselves, and much more. To be fair, my path in the legal profession has not been as lucrative as someone with the same number of years of experience at a corporate law firm — but, I also haven’t worked anything resembling an 80-hour workweek during that time either. My career has been nothing that resembles “traditional”, yet I have been able to meet, counsel, and develop long-standing relationships with hundreds of clients in my 8 years as a licensed attorney. When I graduated in 2012, it was immediately apparent that all you really need to practice law is a computer, and maybe sometimes a phone. That understanding has underpinned Holon’s business model, and that of other cloud-based and innovative law firms that are beginning to take over the industry in terms of client satisfaction and service delivery.
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 a naturally curious person who gravitated toward music and creative endeavors pretty early in life. After messing around with a few different instruments as an 8/9 year old, I eventually found the bass guitar when I was 11, and never looked back. I played in my school’s jazz band from 7th grade on, formed a rock band with some friends outside of school, and then when I went to college, I played in jazz combos and later a frat-party cover band for the last few months of my senior year. I also dove into the live music scene in Philadelphia (where I went to college) and got involved with my college radio station, and played in some pit bands for musicals. Once I graduated, I looked back and realized that everything I had done involved working with music, hanging around musicians and other creative people, and helping them in whatever ways I could. When I learned that entertainment lawyers existed, I started exploring how I could channel my passion for music and creativity into a “career” — which led me to law school.
Having grown up and gotten all my schooling thus far in the Northeast, I was ready to explore somewhere new, which brought me to New Orleans. I attended Tulane for law school and got involved in the music scene on the weekends of my first year of school. That evolved into me joining a band my final semester, being hired as a manager for a jazz/funk artist, and developing a practice as a booking agent and independent concert promoter.
I spent a little over 2 years, after graduating law school, wearing multiple hats as manager, booking agent, and promoter, before shifting to law practice full-time. I started a solo practice, still in New Orleans, in 2018, and informed all of my musician, artist, and photographer friends and contacts that I was now available to help them with contracts, copyrights, trademarks, and business formation. I moved to Denver in 2019 and continued offering the same services, but by then had expanded to offer these services to clients not only in Louisiana, but also in Colorado, New York, and elsewhere.
In late 2020, I joined a nationwide cloud-based firm where I was able to continue offering my legal services in entertainment, with a focus on music, film, and visual art, on a larger platform. During that time, I expanded my geographic reach and skill set, and ran an entertainment law podcast called Law in the Limelight. After some of my partners at that firm formed a cannabis practice group, demonstrating that legal services could be offered in a collaborative and holistic way, we recognized it as a good time to split off and form our own firm.
For the last 18 months, I have been a Founding Partner at Holon Law Partners, where we are building a nationwide, full-service, cloud-based firm with specialized skill sets in entertainment, trademarks, business, cannabis and hemp industry, litigation, employment law, and more. I’ve continued to build my entertainment practice, moving into more film production legal work recently, while also deepening my networks in the music and cannabis industries.
I still play bass – 23 years strong! – and currently play in a few groups in Denver: jazz vocalist Danette Hollowell, funk/rock band Half Maxx, and the psychedelic rock trio Ellie & the Alibis.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
Being a nice person who’s approachable and willing to answer questions. I frequently teach workshops to artists on how copyright and contract law works, and love to share this knowledge and information with artists to make sure they’re empowered to make smart decisions for themselves in their career. As a result, I find now that nearly all of my clients come from word of mouth referrals, or are people that I met directly in person at an event.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
My cofounders and I met at our previous job. We were working together in a cloud-based law firm, where the partners spanned from New York to Virginia to Colorado to Arizona, and found that some of us in particular had really good working synergies and friendships, despite the distance and difficulties of working together in a cloud-based setting. However, we all shared an entrepreneurial spirit, a sense that we could improve upon the cloud-based model, and a feeling that the digital workplace needed a better sense of camaraderie. Eventually we realized, as we teamed up to form a practice group at our previous firm, that we could build a similar type of firm, a better way – and so we spent a few months planning, and then jumped ship together. Since July of 2023, we haven’t looked back.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.holonlaw.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maxhassesq
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maxhassesq
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximilianhass
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@HolonLaw
Image Credits
Headshot: Alex Hass
Portrait in front of lake: Danette Hollowell
Playing bass: Kelly Jean