EDITORIAL
2 Obiter Dicta
Start-up Summer
How I turned an idea, a passion, and four months
of free time into a business
T
his summer, I decided to dedicate my time
to building a legal information website. I made
this decision without any particular affinity
for web development, or any real business or
legal experience to guide me. The decision had something to do with the weak job market, my lack of confidence in my professional abilities, and my fondness
for working in sweatpants at 2am, but those weren’t
decisive factors either.
In fact, there really wasn’t any single motivation or
goal driving me; just a collection of ideas, plans, and
doubts that ended up working out okay. Fortunately,
as I look back on how far things have come, and start
planning for the future, I am coming to realize that
the slow grind of determination may, in fact, be worth
more than the lofty pursuit of perfection. And so
here I am, writing about the many failures and missteps, out of which the Legal Information Network of
Canada (canadalegalhelp.com) was born, in the hopes
of showing that sometimes you don’t need to follow
the script to get a pretty good story.
It’s one thing to have an idea, but as I found out,
a whole other deal to act on it. My idea came while
I was working for JusticeNet last year, helping refer
low-income individuals to lawyers who would work
pro bono. Many callers were asking us for basic legal
information, unsure of whether to get a lawyer, and
there was no real service in place to help them. I figured there should be some sort of simple website
where individuals can submit a question and receive
some basic information and resources.
A ton of legal information is online but it’s widely
dispersed and can be time consuming and difficult to
navigate. Individuals are generally left to either find
free legal information options themselves or go to a
lawyer. In my mind, it stands to reason that individuals looking for a specific piece of legal information
should have a service available to help them get the
help they need. Having worked at JusticeNet, I had
a first-hand look at the breadth of the access to justice crisis, and I knew how badly individuals going
through difficult and distressing legal situations
needed help. With an idea in mind, and a passion to
help fill this void in our legal system, I began planning
for the summer.
When I speak to people about my website now, I
am often fielding questions about how I managed to
turn my idea into something tangible. When I started
planning my summer, I was faced with the same
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4700 Keele Street
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e. [email protected]
w. obiter-dicta.ca
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“Judges are not like pigs, hunting for truffles
in buried briefs.”
justice posner
ê The Obiter’s Managing Editor shares how easy it is to turn a passionate idea into a successful business.
Image from www.canadalegalhelp.com. Photo credit: Sarah Stein
question, and it is the answer I reached which has
largely inspired this editorial.
I found that there is no magic formula to building
a business. There’s no road you have to travel or route
you have to take. With an idea in mind, and a passion
for the work and the field, all it really took for me was
determination, a short memory, and lots of trial and
error.
Once I started working, I learnt pretty quickly that
turning an idea into a business is actually not nearly
the mythical task I had once assumed. I started the
business without any fanfare or celebration. I didn’t
get anyone’s permission or sign up for anything, and
I didn’t even really tell anyone that my decision had
been made. I simply took a few guesses at what the
first steps for building a business might be, and when
I launched into those steps, to my surprise I found it
worked out.
This great divide between idea and action is what
I hope this editorial will inspire others to conquer,
because the truth is, the divide seems much greater
than it actually is. When I started, I guessed that the
first steps I should take would be to write a business
plan, speak to all the advisors I know, and research
the market. With the tasks written out I became
editorial board
editor-in-chief | Karolina Wisniewski
managing editor | Sam Michaels
layout editor | Heather Pringle
editorial staff
business managers | Alvin Qian,
Adam Cepler
communications manager | Angie Sheep
copy editor | Subban Jama
news editor | Mike Capitano
opinions editor | Carla Marti
arts & culture editor | Marie Park
sports editor | Evan Ivkovic
website editor | Asad Akhtar
determined to see them through, and actually found
all the work surprisingly approachable. I quickly
realized that further progress was possible, and could
be done by building off of the foundational blocks I
had set with my work so far.
A couple weeks in, I realized my business plan
made no sense, I had asked advisors all the wrong
questions, and I had about a month more research to
do than I’d initially planned. This is when I started
to really appreciate how important determination
was, but also when I realized how badly I needed
to develop a second skill: a short memory. With my
emerging failures at the front of my mind, all the
determination in the world wasn’t going to be enough
without the ability to remain inspired and motivated.
Slow progress can be extremely disheartening, and
for the first while, slow progress was all I had. At first,
I hated seeing so few results for my work, but once
I really started approaching each day with a short
memory for the last, I found even the worst moments
far more tolerable. With an idea in place, a determined approach, and a plan to move on quickly from
staff writers
Kate Henley, Gleb Matushansky
contributors
Hannah de Jong, Nicholas Banerd, Parmbir
Singh Gill, Erin Garbett, Andrea Anderson,
Kendall Grant, Christian Ferraro, Mai Nguyen,
Serena Dykstra, Zachary D’Onofrio, Jasleen
Johal
Submissions for the October 14 issue are
due at 5pm on October 4, and should be
submitted to: [email protected]
» see EDITORIAL, page 16
Obiter Dicta is the official student newspaper
of Osgoode Hall Law School. The opinions
expressed in the articles contained herein are
The Obiter Dicta is published biweekly
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