JULIA SHAPIRO:  Founder & CEO, Hire an Esquire Inc., launched 2011.

Home base: I’m based in San Francisco. The company’s main offices are in New York City and San Francisco.

Find me: Website: hireanesquire.com. Twitter: @hireanesquire, LinkedIn, Facebook

Education: University of Southern California, B.A., Comparative Literature & Spanish, 2003. The College for International Studies, Madrid, 2002. Temple University, James E. Beasley School of Law, J.D. 2007.

Work history: I’ve been a freelance attorney and consultant; served as an adjunct professor at Temple Law School International LLM Program; was a contract attorney at Pepper Hamilton.

Is this your first start-up?  Yes.

What problem does it solve? Hire an Esquire helps law firms and in-house legal departments directly connect with an on-demand workforce via a vetted marketplace. HaE has been likened to online dating for law practices and contract/freelance attorneys. Our online system handles the entire process from location through payment and ongoing relationship management. By automating, optimizing and adding transparency to the traditional staffing process law practices save more than 50 percent on traditional agency fees and administrative while lawyers are paid higher rates. Our pricing and compensation has made a flexible workforce affordable for smaller firms and attracted attorneys that otherwise wouldn’t pursue contract work. We’re now working with a sizeable base of Fortune 500 clients and  more than 10 percent of the Am Law  200 firms. We can provide lawyers with various practice areas and experience levels, from junior to specialized experts who bill at “rock star” partner rates.

What does it cost for the buyer? Law practices and attorneys determine the hourly rate for a project. Hire an Esquire then charges the organization with  a transaction fee on hours billed by the attorney. Rates are 12 percent on projects with an independent contractor relationship; 45 percent for projects with a W-2 employee relationship where Hire an Esquire is the employer of record (discounted to 40 percent with an early payment agreement.)

Why did you want to pursue this startup? Working at a large law firm, I saw leaders attempting to adapt flexible, on demand models via traditional staffing agencys. Technology seemed an obvious and inevitable way to enhance the process and experience for all users.

Do you have funding yet?  We have raised more than $1 million in two rounds of funding from angels, angel groups, and seed funds. Our angels include veteran VCs Dixon Doll (founder of Doll Capital Management) and and Frank Bonsal (founder of New Enterprise Associates) and law firm partners. Our angel groups and seed funds include Harvard Business School Angels, Stanford Angels and Entrepreneurs and Ulu Ventures’ Miriam Rivera.

What is your biggest challenge re: the start-up? Finding and vetting the best talent for our core team and attorney community.

What do you need right now? In six months? In a year? The best talent. When you have the right people who can execute company plans and goals with intelligence and creativity,  all plans fall into place and can be adjusted as needed. That is one of the few things that will be the same both next year and right now.

What have you learned that you wish you had know five years ago? All of it. There’s no silver bullet to building a strong business—it’s learning, organizing, and responding to a million things quickly and simultaneously.

Who influenced you? My primary influence has been exposure to very different types of people, experiences, and environments my entire life. I’ve received the best collective mentorship from two types of people as an entreprenuer: 1) peer tech entrepreneurs (particularly those six months+ ahead of me in the process) and 2) veterans of very successful businesses that now have perspective on the entire experience.  Most in VC and law were very happy to tell us why we were going to fail in the beginning. Others proved willing to lend time and advice, but it was getting the perspective of many (and sips of information) was helpful. I think part of being an entrepreneur is figuring things out on your own.

What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs? I have no answers, only questions. Every business, industry and experience is unique. The next incredibly successful entrepreneur will violate conventional wisdom. Raising money and dealing with VCs as a woman or minority is a much different experience than as a white male. Things are changing so quickly that advice has a shorter expiration date.

What book changed your life?  No single text has been transformative. Reading the structuralists, post-structuralists and deconstructionists (Michel Foucalt, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jacques Derrida in particular) impacted my perspective the most. My simplified takeaway from these philosophers is that language, laws—and products and services—are a product of overarching systems and assumptions. Much of what we accept as “the way it is” or “the way it should be” developed for a variety of cultural and historical reasons rather than from an absolute authorities. I have found the ability to strip down ingrained assumptions and to question
why society, laws, and products formed as they did to be a good lens through which to see the world as an entrepreneur.

I can’t think of anything universally insightful except for hollow generalities
such as “hire well.”

Where do you want to be in five years? Next week? Next week, I will be watching and responding to a product and process overhaul with the HaE team. In five years I expect Hire an Esquire to be the market leader in how attorneys work. Beyond that, I’ve learned not to make plans.

Your favorite vacation destination: I like to explore new places every time—the more history and old architecture the better. I’m particularly fond of the narrow medieval winding streets in French and Spanish cities as well as the Gothic and Storybook feel of cities like Prague and Ljubljana.

Favorite musician or group: No single favorite. Jay-Z and Amy Winehouse have made appearances on most of my playlists in the last five years.

Favorite quote: “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
—Andy Warhol

Your mantra:  See above. At Hire an Esquire we call this “Just F* Do It.”  New team members get a large JFDI coffee mug with their paperwork to bring to our Monday morning weekly meeting. This is a mandate from  Ginni Chen, our general counsel and director of corporate accounts,who decided that we should start the week with a big cup of JFDI.

Who would you want to be sitting next to you if you got stuck for 3 hours on the tarmac in a 737?
Jane Jacobs and Andy Warhol— I’d convince them to join me in writing an open letter to airline executives on how to improve the passenger user experience.

Monica Bay is a Fellow at CodeX and a freelance journalist at Bloomberg BNA Big Law Business. She is a member
of the California bar. Email: mbay@codex.stanford.edu. Twitter: @MonicaBay