Law community
In the national spotlight of ABC’s entrepreneurial reality show Shark Tank, Julia Rodgers JD'15 explained to the famous venture capitalists—“the sharks”—that millennials need a new way to handle prenuptial agreements.
Creating a “prenup” calls for an awkward conversation that millennials don’t want to have with an attorney in the room, she told the sharks during her November 12 pitch. But they are willing to pay a reasonable fee to generate a legal agreement using her HelloPrenup app on their living room couch, she insisted.
Two sharks, “Mr. Wonderful” Kevin O’Leary and Nirav Tolia, the founder of Nextdoor, seemed to agree with the premise. They teamed up to offer Rodgers and her co-founder Sarabeth Jaffe $150,000 for a 30% stake in the legal-tech tool.
For $599, the HelloPrenup app walks each member of a couple through questions on finances, marital property, debt, inheritance, and spousal support, among other topics, storing responses and flagging areas of potential disagreement so that the couple can settle them and create a legal document for download. Rodgers said a traditional prenup, on average, would cost about $5,000. By contrast, her digital platform allows couples to create a prenup in hours instead of months—and for a fraction of the cost.
By Michael Fisch
Julia Rodgers JD'15 is the co-founder of HelloPrenup.
The idea for an automated prenuptial app germinated from Rodgers’ exposure to legal automation tools in Suffolk Law Professor Gabe Teninbaum’s Lawyering in an Age of Smart Machines class. “This form of automation really struck a nerve with me,” Rodgers says. “I started asking, ‘What else could be automated?’ and I’m still working at it.”
During Teninbaum’s class, she began automating client intake forms at the law firm where she still works, Mavrides Law in Boston. Her co-founder Jaffe is a software engineer.
Learning cutting-edge concepts at Suffolk Law
Tolia complimented Rodgers and Jaffe on their do-it-yourself approach. “There are two ways to start tech companies in Silicon Valley,” he said before making his offer. “One way is to go get a lot of venture capital and go big or go home. The other way is to be scrappy, to be entrepreneurial. I believe in you guys. I believe in the space. I do believe there's a market, and I think it will come to you.”
Not everyone in the legal community is on board yet with legal-tech solutions, Rodgers says, “but Suffolk Law legal innovation students start with the idea that tech innovation can be a powerful positive step and that it can democratize the law, put legal services within an average person’s reach.”
Teninbaum, who helped teach Rodgers some legal-tech basics, agrees that innovations can make legal help more affordable and accessible. “That’s a hallmark of our legal-tech program, he says. He points to Suffolk students’ recent initiatives, including CourtFormsOnline.org, a TurboTax-style tool that has helped thousands of people access the courts during the pandemic to prevent evictions and seek protection from an abusive spouse, among other vitally important matters.
Better to be scrappy
Is Rodgers afraid that HelloPrenup will cut into the profits at her current law firm? That’s not a concern, she says. “There are people who will happily pay for a higher level of service, but there are a lot of millennials out there with school debt, and they can’t spend as much on their prenuptial agreement. It’s a different market.”
The legal market is indeed large enough to encompass new approaches, Teninbaum says. “There is a massive, underserved population in the United States in need of legal services who are able to pay something for them, but unable to pay the going rate for traditional help. HelloPrenup is a terrific example of the type of solution that can assist.”
Images courtesy of: Julia Rodgers; ABC/Shark Tank
A big enough pie?
“One way is to go get a lot of venture capital and go big or go home. The other way is to be scrappy, to be entrepreneurial. I believe in you guys. I believe in the space. I do believe there's a market, and I think it will come to you.”
Nirav Tolia,
the founder of Nextdoor
Julia Rodgers pitches HelloPrenup
Return to Table of Contents
Above from left: Julia Rodgers and her HelloPrenup co-founder Sarabeth Jaffe
Law community
By Michael Fisch
In the national spotlight of ABC’s entrepreneurial reality show Shark Tank, Julia Rodgers JD'15 explained to the famous venture capitalists—“the sharks”—that millennials need a new way to handle prenuptial agreements.
Creating a “prenup” calls for an awkward conversation that millennials don’t want to have with an attorney in the room, she told the sharks during her November 12 pitch. But they are willing to pay a reasonable fee to generate a legal agreement using her HelloPrenup app on their living room couch, she insisted.
Two sharks, “Mr. Wonderful” Kevin O’Leary and Nirav Tolia, the founder of Nextdoor, seemed to agree with the premise. They teamed up to offer Rodgers and her co-founder Sarabeth Jaffe $150,000 for a 30% stake in the legal-tech tool.
For $599, the HelloPrenup app walks each member of a couple through questions on finances, marital property, debt, inheritance, and spousal support, among other topics, storing responses and flagging areas of potential disagreement so that the couple can settle them and create a legal document for download. Rodgers said a traditional prenup, on average, would cost about $5,000. By contrast, her digital platform allows couples to create a prenup in hours instead of months—and for a fraction of the cost.
The idea for an automated prenuptial app germinated from Rodgers’ exposure to legal automation tools in Suffolk Law Professor Gabe Teninbaum’s Lawyering in an Age of Smart Machines class. “This form of automation really struck a nerve with me,” Rodgers says. “I started asking, ‘What else could be automated?’ and I’m still working at it.”
During Teninbaum’s class, she began automating client intake forms at the law firm where she still works, Mavrides Law in Boston. Her co-founder Jaffe is a software engineer.
Learning cutting-edge concepts at Suffolk Law
Tolia complimented Rodgers and Jaffe on their do-it-yourself approach. “There are two ways to start tech companies in Silicon Valley,” he said before making his offer. “One way is to go get a lot of venture capital and go big or go home. The other way is to be scrappy, to be entrepreneurial. I believe in you guys. I believe in the space. I do believe there's a market, and I think it will come to you.”
Not everyone in the legal community is on board yet with legal-tech solutions, Rodgers says, “but Suffolk Law legal innovation students start with the idea that tech innovation can be a powerful positive step and that it can democratize the law, put legal services within an average person’s reach.”
Teninbaum, who helped teach Rodgers some legal-tech basics, agrees that innovations can make legal help more affordable and accessible. “That’s a hallmark of our legal-tech program, he says. He points to Suffolk students’ recent initiatives, including CourtFormsOnline.org, a TurboTax-style tool that has helped thousands of people access the courts during the pandemic to prevent evictions and seek protection from an abusive spouse, among other vitally important matters.
Better to be scrappy
Is Rodgers afraid that HelloPrenup will cut into the profits at her current law firm? That’s not a concern, she says. “There are people who will happily pay for a higher level of service, but there are a lot of millennials out there with school debt, and they can’t spend as much on their prenuptial agreement. It’s a different market.”
The legal market is indeed large enough to encompass new approaches, Teninbaum says. “There is a massive, underserved population in the United States in need of legal services who are able to pay something for them, but unable to pay the going rate for traditional help. HelloPrenup is a terrific example of the type of solution that can assist.”
Images courtesy of: Julia Rodgers; ABC/Shark Tank
A big enough pie?
“One way is to go get a lot of venture capital and go big or go home. The other way is to be scrappy, to be entrepreneurial. I believe in you guys. I believe in the space. I do believe there's a market, and I think it will come to you.”
Nirav Tolia,
the founder of Nextdoor
Julia Rodgers pitches HelloPrenup
Return to Table of Contents
Above from left: Julia Rodgers and her HelloPrenup co-founder Sarabeth Jaffe
From left: Julia Rodgers and her HelloPrenup co-founder Sarabeth Jaffe