How a 30-day LinkedIn Challenge Turned Into a Full-Time Business

Growing up, Laura Frederick had never met a lawyer. 

All she knew was they were really smart people, and she probably wasn’t cut out to be one. 

But during her freshman year of college, Laura heard all of these 18-year-old boys on her dorm room floor talk about how they were going to law school. 

She thought, “Well if you could go to law school, I can do that.” 

She got a full scholarship to Emory University Law School, had great academic credentials, did a Fullbright grant for a year after graduation…

And could not find a job to save her life. 

She ended up working with high school graduates on a hotline for a government auction before getting a job as a law clerk - even though she was a licensed attorney. 

Nine months later, they made her an official attorney. Eventually she moved over franchising, then tech transactions. 

That’s when she fell in love with contracts. 

She was drafting, negotiating, and strategizing all day long, and she absolutely loved it. 

In 2019, she decided to go out and start her own firm. In August of 2020, she had four lawyers working on contract, and she was looking for ways to market her practice. 

So she did a 30-day challenge where she started posting regularly on LinkedIn, and people immediately loved it. All the sudden all these professionals who were home by themselves were coming together every day to talk about contracts. It sparked a whole community. 

Her 30-day challenge turned into her posting 1,391 days in a row. 

In March of 2021, she launched a contract-training business focused on helping lawyers and in-house contract teams learn real-world contract skills.

Since then her business, How to Contract, has delivered hundreds of hours of training to professionals all over the world. In 2021, she launched an annual training extravaganza called ContractsCon. Over 400 people have attended in person and 1,200 virtually. 

I asked Laura, “Why are people intimidated by contracts?” 

Here was her response: 

You have to write things in a particular way, and there’s a bit of a learning curve. You have to learn things like, “What should an indemnification provision say? What parts are important?” 

If you haven’t tackled the learning curve, it seems intimidating. But if you take the time to understand them on the front end, they become more fun and not as awful as they seem on the outside. 

So how can lawyers get better at reading and drafting contracts? 

Approach each contract as a story. 

Laura tells people to read contracts as a story. Where can it go wrong? Where are there gaps that aren’t covered? If both sides only have to do what’s written down, what things aren’t written down that you need to add? What things are written down but aren’t right? How can you fix those? 

The contract is telling the story of a relationship between two parties and how it’s going to play out. You start to think of what needs to happen if the story sidelines. Then you build the contract around those eventualities.

Be clear and use plain English. 

A lot of contract templates are written in very old-fashioned language, which is a difficult style to read. Nobody can figure out what it says. These days, everything’s about clarity. 

A clear contract beats an old-fashioned contract any day. 

There are some words and phrases you have to use, but make it really clear. That way, you’ll avoid the common traps and problems people fall into. 

Trust yourself. 

A lot of people get intimidated by contracts and don’t question the language, even if it doesn’t make sense to them. Laura sees a lot of attorneys read a contract and say, “Yeah, it looks good.” Then she’ll read the same thing and say, “What about this part?” They’ll say, “Oh yeah, I saw that, but I thought it was okay.” 

A lot of the feedback Laura gets on her training is, “You’ve confirmed so much of what I already know, and I just didn’t trust myself. Now I feel more confident.” 

Drafting and negotiating can sometimes feel like this isolating experience where it’s you against the other side. Having someone there to say, “Yeah, you’re right,” builds confidence. 

If you want to hear my full conversation with Laura: Listen to my latest podcast episode! 

I remember doing transactional law and seeing forms come across my screen, thinking, “Can someone please explain to me what all this means? Because this looks like a foreign language to me.” I would’ve been so grateful to have someone like Laura in those days. I love that she’s making contracts fun. 

Here’s where to find Laura: 

Website: howtocontract.com

LinkedIn: Laura Frederick