We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sam Mazzeo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sam, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the best thing you’ve ever seen (or done yourself) to show a client that you appreciate them?

I’m taking this question and applying it generally to my law firm, mainly because one of our core ethos at Better is to treat our clients like the respect-deserving humans that they are. We absolutely don’t buy into the three-piece suit, corner office, ivory tower BS that you get with most big law firms – our clients are our friends, community members, people we respect, and ultimately they are people we hope to educate and empower.

We demonstrate our appreciation for our clients by providing lower rates, technology that makes our process smooth and seamless, and we go to pretty great lengths to provide videos, illustrations, explanations, and really anything we can provide that explains and educates our clients – our goal is to help our clients understand what we’re doing for them so that they can take an active role in their legal decisions and feel empowered and confident in doing so.

We also offer giveaways, free workshops, and we like to spotlight the work our clients are doing to get them out there, too!

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?

Better apc is my second law firm, the first one was called Wilkinson Mazzeo or WilkMazz. I actually found myself at Invisible Children (of the KONY 2012 fame) as an unpaid intern during the Spring of 2013 after basically flunking out of my first law firm / attorney job. Alright, maybe not flunking out since I was at a law firm doing well enough, I just could not reconcile the practices and the cases the firm took with my own values and moral compass (as is the case with a large portion of the legal work out there for me).

During my time interning at Invisible Children, my perspective completely shifted from feeling like I was handcuffed to a stuffy and sketchy legal profession for my career, to realizing that so many people do innovative and different things with their degrees, even a law degree. This realization is what set me down the path that got me to where I am today.

About 1.5 years after starting at Invisible Children, I started WilkMazz with my previous partner to help other non-profits and creatives with their legal questions. I quickly realized that our communities and the folks I wanted to help would need more, so I dove into learning corporate law, llc laws, trademark practice, copyright, and any other business legal or non-profit legal I could find. I’m lucky to be a quick learner, but the application of the law to creative, innovative, and social justice causes can also be quite fascinating!

After operating WilkMazz for about 6 years, my previous partner wanted to start a family and transition into advising non-profits, so we closed WilkMazz in 2020 and I started Better on March 1, 2020.

Yup, March 1, 2020 is when I launched my new firm and we were going to focus on offering two in-person events per month – a legal workshop and a live, podcast-style conversation with our founder clients. Covid-19 had other ideas.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Picking up the thread on when we launched Better at the outset of Covid – we had to quickly figure out ways to demonstrate to our communities that we had a new law firm and that we would invest in our communities as we always had with WilkMazz.

One way we did this was to offer online, virtual workshops and “office hours” a few times a month in order to still get information out there and help people understand their legal questions. We teamed up with clients of ours that have large social media followings and tried to get our workshops out in front of as many eyeballs as possible!

Another initiative we pivoted to was our Commercial Co-Venture Campaign. You likely see folks giving a portion of their sales profits to a cause or a charity? That’s actually a legally required registration that most people don’t know about, so we decided to do our own campaign and get registered to lead by example. For anyone that worked with us during the Summer of 2020 for a set selection of our legal projects, we donated a portion of the proceeds (in compliance and under our registration) so we could demonstrate the compliance for our clients and communities.

Another initiative was our Anti-Racist Book Giveaway. We spent roughly $1,000 in 2020 providing anti-racism books to folks that reached out and asked, whether we knew them or not. We paid for the books and the shipping. This was borne out of my own unlearning and journey to become more aware of our systemic issues in America and many of the books we gave away are books I read myself.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I’m going to answer this question, but I think my responses here also answer many other questions (like how do we get clients, how do market ourselves, etc.).

We pride ourselves on, and work damn hard to be authentic and fair in our work. This means giving it to our clients straight, it means treating opposing counsel or other sides fairly, it means owning our mistakes, and it generally means treating others the way we would want to be treated.

We firmly believe, and we see this evidenced in our daily lives all the time with our practice, that being honest and straightforward with others makes everything easier and life flows more naturally when you aren’t trying to hide anything. This is true of client relationships, it’s true of community building, it’s true of working with other attorneys when one is adverse to our client, and most of all, it is true for my law firm and staff – I know that I feel better about interactions that are purposeful and truthful and I do believe that my staff and communities feel more empowered and heard when they are met with purpose and truth.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.inbetterwetrust.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inbetterwetrust/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inbetterwetrust
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/37558523/admin/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR3XDxbtC1uZfX1m6gy-Z3Q/playlists

Image Credits
Photos by Scratchkatshots Photography @scratchkatshots