All for One, One for All

• Author: John Roemer
• Pages: 36-37

36 || ABA JOURNAL JULY-AUGUST 2019

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SARA WADFORD/SHUTTERSTOCK

Business of Law

The fl edgling v irtual fi rm Vanst

Law in San Diego has no o ce, no

break room and no conference ro om of

its own—so the pa rtners get creative

about fi nding ways t o stay collegial.

“Our fi rm c ulture is extremely import ant to us. We

can’t meet at the watercooler, but isolation isn’t a prob-

lem,” says founder and CEO Cynthia Morga n-Reed .

Instead, the fi ve women who currently comprise

the partnership ros ter make a point of assembling at

local events. There ar e meetings of the Lawyers Club

of San Diego, an all-fema le bar association . There’s

Equality Ca lifornia’s annual awards dinner , where one

of the partners host s a table. When the fi rm onboards

a new partner, as it has ever y other month or so since

Morgan-Reed opened the vi rtual doors in September

2018, members gather for a welcome session, some-

times at Enrich, a c oworking space for solo and small-

fi rm law yers.

Morgan-Reed planned it that w ay when she tran-

sitioned from her solo practice la st year. Earlier, she

had spent 12 years in tr aditional fi rms not her ow n,

and she was fed up with t he pay disparities, the struc-

tural rigid ities and the misogyny, she says. Why

the name? “Vanst” is a mashup of the fi rst letters of

Morgan-Reed’s children’s names, Vaughn and Stella ,

with an “n” in the middle for “and.” Plus, it sounds li ke

“advanced,” Morgan-Reed points out .

Indeed, one of her goals was to c reate an innovative,

forward-thin king fi rm. So she create d a software-con-

nected work-from-home fi rm w here everyone’s a part-

ner and all receive 70% of what they c ollect on their

All for One, One for All

Fed up with pay inequities and the ‘boys club’ mentality ,

a San Diego lawyer launched an all-female, all-partner virtual fi rm

By John Roemer

Law

Firms

own clients. Thir ty percent goes to overhead and com-

pensation for Morgan-Reed and her chie f operating

o cer, tax at torney Allison Soares . New partners must

arrive wit h a $250,000 book of business, but once at

the fi rm, t hey can set their own rates and month ly

schedules. As Morgan-Ree d puts it on the fi rm’s web-

site, there are “no long commutes to a n o ce, no face

time, no o ce pol itics. We lower our carbon footprint

and increase our impa ct.” The cost savings can be

passed on to the client th rough lower billable rates, she

adds.

Partners themselve s handle most back-o ce duties.

“They may charge a lower rat e or a fl at rate for associ-

ate-level work,” Morgan-Reed says. “ They are also free

to hire paraleg als or contract attorneys to a ssist. We

leave it to their discret ion; they know their needs best.”

The fi rm’s civil lit igator, Jacqueline Vinaccia, uses a

paralegal. Morga n-Reed says she’s hiring a planner as

an independent contractor t o help with her land use

work. The fi rm ha s an administrator, and the indi vid-

ual partners h ire her as each needs help, Morgan-Reed

says.

“There’s no black box. We are transpar ent with our

formulas,” Morgan-Reed says. “Ou r philosophy is

based on community a nd support. We won’t fi ght over

how much each gets of the pie. We don’t want sharp

elbows. We’ll just make more pie.”

Law fi rm st rategist Kent Zimmerman n of the

Zeughauser Group consult ancy says a drawback to vir -

tual fi r ms is that they lack the breadth a nd depth that

raise the profi les of traditional fi r ms. He points out

that traditiona l fi rms also tend to have robus t internal