Recession Business Good, Sticky Business Better

The last few months have confirmed something that I’ve thought for years, but could never be totally sure of until now: JPG Legal is a recession business. We’re the budget brand that people buy at the supermarket when their preferred brand starts to seem extravagant. More and more small and mid-sized businesses are digging deeper for savings and ditching their conventional attorneys for our lower fees and transparent pricing.

Last year my goal was to finish 2019 with over $1 million in revenue, a number we hit in mid-December. This year we passed $1 million in mid-July, on track to finish 2020 at about $1.9 million. Less than two years ago this firm was just my solo practice, and now there are about to be six of us: me, three attorneys, a paralegal, and a legal assistant who will start here in August. Following a brief revenue dip in March when the global business ecosystem was adapting to changing conditions, our monthly revenue has continued its upward trend.

Like the budget brands at supermarkets, our quality is not actually any lower than that of the larger, more recognizable brands. Frequently the only difference between a major brand and its less popular competitors is the accrued goodwill associated with the trademarks of the larger company — in other words, the brand identity. This is one reason why trademark rights are so important in the first place, of course. 

I have no reason to believe the clients who switched to us will forget about us when the economy recovers. Not just because we have a memorable brand, but because of the ratchet effect that a crisis can have on standard operating procedures. We’ve seen this as most white collar work has become remote work. Now that companies have finally been forced to adopt it, they will have difficulty ditching remote work simply because things have returned to normal. Recessions and crises push companies to make changes, ratcheting things forward in a way that these companies were too risk-averse or too lethargic to try during comfortable times.

JPG Legal may not enable our clients to work in their pajamas and skip their commutes like Zoom and Slack do, but once a company has paid less for trademark attorneys and achieved the same results, with less hassle and unpredictability, why would they go back to a conventional law firm? Like remote work, what started as a temporary solution will normalize and become part of our clients’ business models, regardless of their financial outlook.

Because of that staying power, we’re not just a recession business, but a sticky business as well. When the recession recedes, businesses will stick with us and decline to switch back to conventional law firms. At that point, JPG Legal will stop being a recession business and start being business as usual.

If you own a business or plan to start a business, I urge you to use this recession as an opportunity to offer new processes to potential clients who might not have been open to them during normal times, but who will be likely to adopt these processes for financial or logistical reasons during this crisis. If the processes you’ve developed offer a clear advantage over industry norms, these clients will continue to pay for them after the recession is over.