Choose Your Own Life and Create Personal Freedom

The Free Lawyer

Laura Frederick is our guest today. Laura has a background in Big Law and as in house general counsel, but courageously opened her own firm and has created a How To Contract Platform to help other legal professionals learn how to effectively navigate the contract world.

Laura addresses so many important topics:

-How we learn from the challenges in our life

-How we can manage fear in our life

-How to choose our own path in the legal profession

-How to use LinkedIn to grow your network and your business

-How to create personal freedom in your own life

Laura Frederick is the Founder and CEO of How to Contract, which helps lawyers and professionals learn how we draft and negotiate contracts in the real world, and Managing Attorney at Laura Frederick Law, PLLC, a boutique law firm based in Austin, Texas that helps companies buy, sell, and license technology products.

Laura worked on commercial contracts throughout her career, including 11 years in law firms including Big Law firms like Morrison & Foerster, and 14 years as in-house counsel at cutting-edge technology and energy companies like Tesla. After working for others her whole career, she decided in 2019 to work for herself and opened her solo law practice. Then in August 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Laura started sharing what she knew about contracts in daily contracting tips on LinkedIn. The idea to post every day started as a 30-day challenge. She started adding to each post a self-made funny cartoon that quickly become her trademark.

With the success of her tips on LinkedIn, Laura published a collection of 91 tips in November 2020 in the Amazon bestseller, “​​Practical Tips on How to Contract: Techniques and Tactics from an Ex-BigLaw and Ex-Tesla Commercial Contracts.”  Several law schools use Laura’s book to teach practical contract skills to their students. She also launched the How to Contract training business. Thousands of lawyers and professionals have signed up for her training membership or events. Then in January 2022, Laura hosted a first-of-its-kind virtual conference called the How to Contract Conference featuring 14 practicing lawyers, each sharing their contract insights and techniques.

Laura continues posting daily contract tips and cartoons on LinkedIn. She shared recently that in the two years since she started posting daily contract tips, her posts had been seen 9,200,000 times. She continues to find other ways to share her expertise. She’s publishing an expanded edition of her book in September 2022 featuring over 300 tips, each with one of her signature silly cartoons. She also is planning the next big practical contract training event for February 2023.

Are any of you suffering from burnout and a difficulty in setting boundaries? If so, obtain my free tips on how to set boundaries and avoid burnout here: https://www.garymiles.net/burnout

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