What happens when a lawyer stops accepting inefficiency as “just the way things are”? In this episode, Zack Glaser talks with attorney and legal tech founder Katya Fisher about her journey from launching a solo practice during the Great Recession to building scalable tools for transactional lawyers.

Katya shares how her legal experience—spanning BigLaw, in-house, and solo practice—revealed pain points in the dealmaking process that technology still hadn’t solved. She explains how she went from identifying those issues to building software that brings clarity, organization, and efficiency to high-stakes legal work.

Along the way, Katya unpacks:

The scrappy start to her legal career

How working solo gave her an edge inside a global corporate group

What legal professionals need to know about scaling their ideas

Why tech tools fail lawyers—and how that can change

Whether you're a lawyer thinking beyond the billable or simply curious how innovation happens in the legal world, this episode delivers practical insights with an entrepreneurial twist.

Listen to our other episodes on entrepreneurship:

#411: Staying Entrepreneurial at a Bigger Firm, with Nick Pleasants Apple Podcast | Lawyerist

#268: Riding the Entrepreneurial Rollercoaster, with Cameron Herold Apple Podcast | Lawyerist

#205: Entrepreneurial Poverty & Why Average Law Firms Lose, with Mike Michalowicz Apple Podcast | Lawyerist

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Chapters/Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction: The Entrepreneurial Lawyer

01:02 Quarterly Planning: Intentional Business Growth

07:15 Solo Practice Origins: Scrappy Beginnings

13:36 The Competitive Advantage of Broad Experience

17:51 ADHD as a Superpower: Hyperfocus and Foresight

23:36 Accurately Identify a Business Problem

30:40 From Idea to Product: Building a Product or Workflow

36:10 Articulating Vision and Gaining Buy-In

41:14 Lessons Learned: Advice for Aspiring Innovators

Xinshu Dong of RockX, Unix, the history of commuting and words