Frank Lab: The Go-to Startup Program For Legal Advice!
Ever wondered what legal skills you need to scale your start-up? If you’ve ever thought, “do I really need a lawyer for this?”, then this might be the program for you.
Frank Lab is a series of legal masterclasses powered by one of Birchal’s partners Hall & Wilcox. Their six-month program is designed to support startups in approaching legal matters as well as educate founders on the space.
Running for the last 3 years, Frank Lab 2021 is taking a female-led business focus as part of their initiative to provide dedicated support and assistance to women working in startups and to reduce barriers to entry for women in growth businesses.
As well as being able to participate in the program of masterclasses, a successful applicant to Frank Lab 2021 will:
- receive an initial $5000 to spend on legal services and get to work with an experienced lawyer as their own trusted legal advisor for the duration of the program;
- have the opportunity to regularly meet with their Frank Lab Trusted Advisor who will assist them in identifying their legal needs and achieve their commercial objectives;
- be able to access to Hall & Wilcox office space nationally and the firm’s Smarter Law technology solutions; and
- be introduced to Hall & Wilcox networks, including accountants and investors.
To read their recent industry report and apply for the program before applications shut on May 15 2021, click here.
But what is it actually like to take part in the program?
Prior to working with Birchal, I was General Manager for the Melbourne based startup Mtime, and together with my team, I participated in the 2019 Frank Lab program.
Once a month, for six months, we attended seminars run by Hall & Wilcox and had a one-on-one lawyer assigned to us to provide Mtime with tailored legal advice. While I won’t go into the specifics of the advice Mtime received, more generally companies often request guidance on:
- Developing shareholder agreements
- Developing employment contracts
- IP & patents
- Plus many more topics!
It was fantastic to be able to get into the nitty gritties on this, and safe to say, I found it was a really beneficial program for the Mtime team to be a part of.
On completing the program, my key takeaways were:
- Being more familiar with frequently used legal terms & practices in the small business world. I am still no lawyer, but I feel I can now find my way around employment agreements, understanding various company legal structures and legal implications coming from capital injections.
- Connecting with other startup founders, speakers and Hall & Wilcox employees. This helped me further develop my network and I’m glad to know there are great people, there I can reach out to if in need! Having access to professional legal advice that was specifically tailored to our business was a huge help, not to mention the allowance granted during the program to focus on these important foundations.
As always, I am more than happy to chat with anyone who’d like to pick my brains on my experience at FrankLab, so please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn before or after you apply!
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Reflecting findings from ‘Spotlight on women in startups’ report, to be considered for the 2021 Frank Lab each business must be female-led, where ‘female-led’ is defined as a business that:
- Is majority owned by women (50% or more); or
- with a majority of women in the senior leadership team (50% or more).
It was a wonderful program to participate in and I highly encourage all of the businesses in the Birchal network to apply.
Frank Lab applications 2021 is now open and is closing on 15th May!
