Starting and Building a Niche Practice
Have you ever considered a niche practice? What is it? Can it be profitable? How do you market it? Watch this video interview with John Szymankiewicz from the Beer Law Center to hear how he got the idea to focus his representation on breweries and distilleries, the rewards and challenges, and his advice if you are considering your own niche practice. Watch the video and/or scroll down to read the edited transcript.
Edited Transcript:
Today we welcome John Szymankiewicz, attorney at the Beer Law Center. I met John at a Zoom meeting for the North Carolina Bar Association’s Small Firm Technology Council meeting.
Q: So, John can you tell us a little bit about your background?
A: My background is interesting. I come to the law from a different world. Law is my Career 2.0. I spent my undergraduates in chemical engineering, and I spent 10 or 15 years in the pharmaceutical industry as a project manager and engineer. I decided at some point that I wanted something a little bit different. I went to law school at night and got my degree and decided I want to do something I enjoy doing instead of something that that just happens to make money.
Q: I’ve met attorneys who focus their practice on helping people with specific needs. For instance, I know of a law firm that who represents property owners of properties with fewer than 10 units. It’s not so much a niche, but what they do and who they help is a little bit niche. Or there is the Fun lawyer who I met in Maryland. He represents traveling carnivals – you know the ones who go and set up in the parking lots and I was thinking, well, there’s got to be a lot of legal issues around that. And then I’ve met lawyers who do just motorcycle accidents or those who represent people looking for ISP subpoena defense. And drone law and things like that. So, what made you decide to have a niche practice?
A: Well for me that niche practice idea means you either have niche clients or you have niche subject matter. In my case I represent or work exclusively with breweries, wineries and distilleries, alcohol producers, and alcohol retailers. I want to work with these people. I’ve been a homebrewer for 20 odd years, and I’ve always been kind of a beer guy. And had gotten some exposure to the industry just from my enthusiasm. I decided OK I want to help people chase this dream and I want to be Involved with these folks. There’s a common saying among the craft beer community that the industry is about 99% jerk free and so I was like, OK, that’s the industry I want to work with.
If you just search Google for “beer, trademark disputes” there’s one filed every week. Or somebody complaining about this or that. Several years ago, there were two breweries, one in Colorado and one in California, which figured out they both had the same name for a beer, and both of their lawyers said, “we need to sue that the other company”. The beer was called Salvation. The brewers got together and said, no, we’re not going to do that. So, the two brewers made a beer together and called it “Collaboration, not Litigation”.
I thought that was a neat story that kind of encapsulated that these are the folks I want to work with and the kind of industry that I want to be a part of.
Q: When I’ve talked to lawyers about starting a practice, I suggest picking a few niches because right now a general practice would be extremely hard to market, especially when there’s so many established firms. They are trepidations about choosing a niche because they might be bored just practicing in one area of the law. I thought you could go through all the areas of law you need to be conversant in for a beer law practice?
A: Oh, good question. OK, so that that comes back down to are you going to be focused on a specific topic or a specific group of people? And for what? We’re focused on tat niche client – alcohol producers and sellers. I consider us a business generalist with an alcohol overlay, so we do everything from corporate formation to fund raising. We deal with federal and state licensing for alcohol production and sales and trademark work. We do mergers and acquisitions for buying and selling and of course just a ton of general counsel sort of work for these folks. Then layer on top of that that that extremely specific alcohol regulation.
What do you need to know to practice in this area of law? Well, you start with the alcohol stuff because the rest of it a lot of it you got from law school. The more you do, the more you obviously get to know it.
Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of coursework in the area. There is one class in Texas or Colorado where they teach about alcohol law in law school. Everybody that that does this kind of work had to figure it out, make mistakes, and do a lot of reading and a lot of talking to people. So, the foundation is understanding the alcohol stuff and then building on everything else. You do everything from secure transactions and sales to basic contracts.
Q: So, one of the things I really like about your website is that it makes clear that you don’t just represent breweries even though it’s called the Beer Law Center. Your website is written in plain language, and it makes clear that you represent breweries but also any other alcohol producer as well. The other question is, without having gone to your website, if somebody says you’re the Beer Law Center, do you have a lot of people think you represent clients for DUI?
A: Oh yes, yes. We get asked “can you represent me for this DWI?”. We’re transactional, and so we’re always like no, no, no, we help you with the business of alcohol, not the effects – that is somebody else,
Going back to the name Beer Law Center, which was probably a marketing mistake on my part early on because you know it has legs as a brand and people intuitively get what we do but we now must spend quite a bit of time and effort saying we’re not just beer. We do kombucha and mead and wine and the seller side, even if you’re not producing alcohol. Our initial focus was to generate our practice around breweries and then we have obviously expanded over time to do other things.
And that’s something that if you’re starting a niche practice, you really must struggle with – how narrow do I want to be and still be wide? Enough to capture clients that may not be or may be on the fringe of what the subject matter you’re looking at.
Q: Interesting! So the Beer Law Center is part of a larger law practice, right? Matheson and Associates? So, Beer Law Center is a sub brand. Matheson and Associates also has another sub brand, right?
A: We’ve got a couple of sub brands, Matheson and Associates is the larger law firm. Beer Law Center is me, an associate, and a paralegal. We’ve also got a family law side and a criminal defendant side. What we wanted to do was have focused teams around a specific area but be able to say that we’re not so small that we can only do that for you. It helps us push our marketing dollars where they’re most going to make a difference, and that’s in those niche brands.
Q: It’s much easier to market with some specific keywords, I think. You could do a new sub brand called fermented drink law. So, are there other beer lawyers?
A: There are a lot of folks out there practicing in the space, but for most lawyers they have an alcohol practice as part of their overall practice. There are far fewer of us that dedicate our business to alcohol practice and that’s all we do. I think in the country, there’s only about two dozen. A little less than two dozen that focus exclusively on alcohol. There are some amazing lawyers that have this as sort of part of their practice and tend to focus on alcohol litigation or distribution and representation of the middle tier of sellers and producers.
Q: What is the most challenging part of having a niche practice?
A: When I first hung out the shingle for Beer Law Center, I got 5/6 calls a month. But I got to be a beer lawyer. My normal answer was first marry well because there’s no money in this. Every one of your clients is a small. You know small business and they’re looking very closely at hopefully not needing to have a lawyer, so you’re constantly educating them.
Q: It sounds like there are several challenges. What’s worked best and what hasn’t worked in terms of marketing your practice?
A: My personal belief for marketing is you must go to where your clients are. The craft beer/craft alcohol industry tend to want to see somebody who’s committed to the industry. We do a lot of writing. We’ve gotten off track the last year or so, but we try to post every week on topics that we’re seeing or new stuff that’s coming out on our blog. We even wrote a book for breweries a couple of years ago and are working on one for distilleries.
We get to know our potential clients. We go to some of the conferences and just walk around and talk to people and meet folks and engage in conversations. Then if they ask, give them a business card. I’m not good at the hard sell.
There are different schools of thought on this as well, but for example, we don’t charge for an initial consult, so I’d say 20% of the calls that I get that I spend an hour or more with these folks. They’re nowhere near ready to hire anybody. You know there are two-three years out from doing anything, or if I’m incredibly lucky, sometimes I convince them not to do something because they don’t understand the complexities, right? Or suggest what could be problematic. Some potential clients think opening a brewery would be just like opening a dry cleaner. Then I can explain why it is not.
Q: What advice would you give to a firm or a lawyer who’s contemplating adding a niche practice?
A: First thing that that I would think about is if you don’t already have the book business in that area. Then you need to be patient because it takes time to do that. When I decided, OK, I’m going to have the Beer Law Center, and this is what I want to do with the rest of my life that’s what I marketed towards.
However, for a long time I practiced what I called threshold law – which is whatever kind of problem comes over the threshold. I did a lot of work that I had no interest in so I could keep the lights on and pay the bills. Meanwhile I focused and marketed on what I wanted to do, and it probably took a good three, maybe four years, before I was able to whittle down all that other stuff to just what I wanted to do.
If I talk to new lawyers and they say, “I want to start a trademark boutique practice”, I remind them that there are a lot of trademark lawyers and encourage them to have a particular angle or ask yourself why you instead of somebody else.
That’s all the time we have, and I really appreciate you sharing how you started the Beer Law Center and your thoughts about niche practice.