Sprintlaw in 2020

2020 has been a disruptive year for small businesses, and for the world more generally. We hope you and your family have stayed safe throughout the year. At Sprintlaw, we’ve been honoured to help our clients through the legal challenges this year has brought, and we’re still here to help. 

With more businesses turning online for legal services, 2020 was a big year for Sprintlaw. In our fourth year running, we reached more clients across the country, grew our team, and received a number of top industry awards.

Here’s what we got up to this year and what’s ahead for 2021. 

Our 2020 highlights

We had many major achievements this year, but here’s what we’re most proud of:

• We grew from 13 to 25 team members in 2020
• We’ve now assisted over 1600 businesses
• We received over a hundred 5 star Google reviews

Awards

2020 saw us win some prestigious awards in the legal and startup spaces. We won New Law Firm of the Year at the Australian Law Awards, and took home the prize for Excellence in Technology & Innovation at the Australasian Law Awards. 

In November, we were named one of Australia’s top legal employers in Australasian Lawyer’s Employer of Choice rankings. 

Our co-founders, Alex and Tomo, won the legal category in the Sydney Young Entrepreneur Awards. Tomo also took out the Commercial Law category at Lawyers’ Weekly 30 Under 30 Awards.

Law in the time of COVID

Coronavirus has had an impact on nearly all our clients. Despite 2020’s obstacles, it’s been inspiring to see businesses innovating to weather the storm. Having a good legal set up can make difficult situations a lot easier.

In 2020, we particularly saw clients needing help in areas like lease reviews, employment advice, business sales, online business contracts and moving businesses online. To answer clients’ common questions, we set up a Coronavirus resource hub and offered free commercial lease consults to help businesses negotiate with landlords.

Our ‘new normal’

We’ve adapted well to working from home, as we’ve always been an online law firm with a remote workforce. This was a deliberate choice we made when starting Sprintlaw back in 2017 – partly out of necessity to cut costs as a young startup, but also because we wanted to attract people who wanted to work more flexibly.

“Our whole system is set up for online delivery, so that’s meant that when everyone suddenly had to work from home, it didn’t have any impact on our operations at all in terms of delivery, because everything is already done online.” 

– Alex Solo, Sprintlaw co-founder, speaks to Law Society Journal

Wellbeing

Even though, as a law firm, we were comfortable working from home, we still did all we could to keep connected through the lockdowns. 

We worked on our own windowsill gardens, growing herbs and greens “together, apart”. Nurturing a garden has proven mental health benefits, and it brought the team together despite the monotony of isolation. 

“Going remote is not just a matter of installing a few software tools and sending everyone home. It requires careful planning and robust organisational design. But if done right, it can pay real dividends by creating a more flexible, productive and ultimately happier workforce.”

– Tomoyuki Hachigo, Sprintlaw co-founder, in Lawyers’ Weekly

We launched a legal subscription offering

Subscription services are a massive part of our lives, and it’s becoming increasingly common for businesses to use a legal subscription service. 

This year, we launched our own subscription service, Sprintlaw Membership. Members get on-demand calls with our lawyers, discounts on our packages, and free legal documents. 

Our lawyers make free updates to documents we’ve previously prepared for members. Current members find this to be a particularly useful feature of the membership. With businesses’ circumstances and relationships changing so quickly as a result of COVID-19, our members have been able to access quick legal advice and contract updates whenever they need it. 

Learn more about Sprintlaw Membership.

Happy holidays!

We’ll be open with a small team all over the holiday break — get in touch if you need legal help over this period. As always, our team can be reached on 1800 730 617 or at team@sprintlaw.com.au. 

For legal updates as we head into 2021, sign up to the Sprintlaw newsletter.