Photos of tattooed Millennials wearing horn-rimmed glasses, jeans and T-shirts that bear such slogans as "I'm gonna have to check with legal" and "The first billion is the hardest" adorn the website of Chattanooga attorney Scott Maucere's legal cooperative, PushToStart.
The photos say it all about the clients that Maucere hopes to attract: Youthful entrepreneurs with startup businesses.
"Here's the deal: You pay one flat price for unlimited legal representation for your first year," the PushToStart website promises. "You're not billed by the hour."
"It's a good niche," says Maucere, who, when asked how to pronounce his name, explains: "It rhymes with 'scary.'" He's gotten about a dozen clients since PushToStart's launch two years ago.
"There's some companies that we represent now that are going to get big," he says. "We're trying to get the small guy who is going to be big in the future."
Maucere isn't the only local attorney who aims to tap the startup market. As Chattanooga continues to burnish its image as a forward-thinking "Gig City" and a nest for entrepreneurs, other law firms have reached out to startups. The biggest player is Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel, P.C., a Chattanooga law firm founded in 1886 that serves a wide range of clients, from automotive and chemical industries to media.
In 2011, it launched a group to nurture startups. Its goal isn't to find the next big thing, said Rick Hitchcock, one of about 20 Chambliss attorneys who work in the startup group.
"Our goal is to support the entrepreneurship community here," says Hitchcock, who is board chairman of The Company Lab, or Co.Lab, the nonprofit startup "accelerator" headquartered in the Edney Building downtown. "Chambliss is a firm that has been around for a long time; we have a tradition of community service."
Chambliss helped about 55 startup businesses last year, he said.
"Good ideas, if they have the right support, are going to succeed," Hitchcock says. "And they're going to succeed at the level they ought to succeed."
That said, Hitchcock predicts Chattanooga's startup scene will produce some big companies.
"We're going to have some home-run hitters come out of this community," he predicts.
Chambliss keeps one totem of its past success working a startup in its downtown offices in Liberty Tower: the table at which the articles of incorporation were signed for Provident Life and Accident, the insurance company that morphed into today's Unum Group, the world's biggest disability insurer.
"For us to be involved with startups is not something new," Hitchcock says. "I imagine that 15 years from now, some of these startups that we're working with today, they will be very large clients of this firm. But that's not the immediate goal. The immediate goal is to help [startups] succeed."
Lawyers in hoodies
Maucere, who grew up in Chattanooga and works out of an office on East Brainerd Road near Highway 153, doesn't see PushToStart as competing with other Chattanooga lawyers. Instead, he says PushToStart competes nationally with the likes of Gunderson Dettmer, a high-powered Silicon Valley firm hired by technology companies and startups.
PushToStart had its launch two years ago at South by Southwest, an annual series of film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It's a cooperative of five attorneys, not a law firm, Maucere said, with another attorney in Chattanooga, Mi Belvin, and attorneys in Atlanta, New York and Austin, Texas.
"We love Chattanooga clients, but we represent clients nationally," he says. "We have some companies that are getting some national recognition. We've had some companies on [ABC's entrepreneurial reality TV show] 'Shark Tank.'"
The edgy look of the models on its website - some of whom are actual lawyers - isn't just for show. PushToStart's employees, who are in their 20s and 30s, will wear jeans, T-shirts and hoodies when they meet with youthful clients.
"We'll dress down on purpose," Maucere says. "No suits and ties when we're working with startups. Law firms just don't speak to that demographic. Far and away the guys that are really going hard after money, they're either young or in that young culture."
That's a contrast to other legal firms that hope to work with entrepreneurs, he said.
"You'll see them at startup conferences wearing suits, looking awkward," Maucere says. "[Entrepreneurs] want to talk to someone that looks and sounds like them."
Maucere said he believes PushToStart is the only firm in the nation whose lawyers have made a conscious decision to gear their attire toward the startup community.
"We have only had positive response about that," Maucere says. "It creates a great image that's lasting and memorable. We did our big launch at South by Southwest two years ago, and [everyone's] like look at these lawyers. These are cool, hipster lawyers."
Full menu or à la carte
There's plenty of work at startups for lawyers to do, even if a business isn't ready to go public and make its first billion.
Maucere's PushToStart website lists some of the legal "i"s to dot, and "t"s to cross: "Entity formation, new business filings, shareholder agreements, corporate compliance, bylaws, operating agreements, leases, IP, trademarks, employee agreements, licensing and tech agreements, contracts."
The cost for the full menu of legal help from PushToStart starts at about $15,000, Maucere said.
"You pay one price and you get an attorney for year-round," he says. "We typically will take a company from very early stages to accepting venture capital funding. That process can take three years or it can take 10 years."
Or startups can buy certain services à la carte, Maucere said, such as contract writing or trademarks or patent work.
"We want to see that the company is going to someplace," he says. "That's part of the excitement. We believe in our clients, and we share the passion our clients have for their products."
Chambliss charges for tasks, not an annual flat fee. Chambliss tries to figure out what entrepreneurs' needs are, Hitchcock said, and gear its fees to what the entrepreneur can afford to pay. Chambliss works with startups to analyze the best form of business structure for them, he said, from a traditional corporation to a limited liability corporation. Chambliss can help startups raise funds, as well, and it has its own patent attorneys on staff.
"We work with them to try to meet their needs on a financial basis they can afford," Hitchcock says. "We try to sit with the startup and figure out what they need, figure out how to prioritize those needs, and we work with them to come up with affordable fees."