Episode 476: Legals in Small Business with Nich Burch of Burch & Co
In this episode of the My Daily Business Podcast: Fiona Killackey wraps up the year with an insightful conversation with Nicholas Burch, founder of Burch & Co, a law firm that is transforming the legal landscape for small business owners. As the last interview episode for 2024, Fiona delves into the importance of legal frameworks in business and how Burch & Co is making legal services accessible and less daunting for entrepreneurs.
Nicholas shares his journey from working in traditional law firms to establishing Burch & Co, driven by a vision to create a people-first legal practice. He discusses the common misconceptions about legal services and how his firm is breaking the mold by offering flat-rate fees and focusing on practical, useful advice. Nicholas also highlights the significance of setting up clear legal structures early on, even before challenges arise, to ensure business success and longevity.
Connect and get in touch with My Daily Business and Burch & Co
Your one-stop destination for premium business tools and resources
Nicholas Burch: From my lived experience and seeing the impact that we can have on setting businesses and companies up for success, planning for that success, and imagining what the future—the ideal future—will look like, and working back from there, putting the building blocks in place from a legal perspective to make that pathway to success as smooth and as wide as possible to make it most likely to be a rewarding experience.
Fiona Killackey: Hello, and welcome to episode 476 of the *My Daily Business Podcast*. Today is the very last interview episode for 2024, and I just have to say a massive thank you for listening this year—or listening in the future. Hey future people, if you are listening to this sometime later on!
But today, in real-time, it is the 27th of December, and I just think this is the perfect interview to finish this year on. If you're listening at any other time in the future, it's still a perfect interview because it's going to give you so many insights into the legal parts of running a business with somebody who absolutely has created a business around helping small business owners.
Before we get stuck into that, I want to again just say a massive, massive thank you. This podcast is building such an incredible community of fellow small business owners around the world. Every time I look at the world map and see the downloads in places I’m not even familiar with, I just think, "This is such an amazing medium and such an amazing time to be a small business owner."
So, from the absolute bottom of my heart: thank you, thank you, thank you for listening to this, for sharing it, and for leaving reviews. Oh my goodness!
And if you have listened all year and you're like, "Actually, I've never left a review," I would love it so much if you could take two seconds and leave a review. Honestly, it would just make my entire year.
The other thing, of course, I want to mention is that I want to really pay my respects and acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I record this podcast, run my business, and live with my family. The lands on which I live have given me so much nurturing, peace, and tranquility in a year—and in a time in the world—when that doesn’t seem to be in abundance in a lot of places.
I’m so unbelievably thankful for that, and so of course I want to acknowledge those traditional owners and custodians, which for me, where I live, is the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. I hope that in 2025, we can really come together as a country here in Australia and work in solidarity with First Nations peoples.
All right, let’s get into today’s interview episode.
Today's interview is with a guest that, honestly, I have wanted to have on the podcast for so long. He and his business are something I recommend to people all the time. Honestly, I think there are about three or four businesses that I recommend to clients on an ongoing basis, and today’s guest, Nicholas Burch from Burch & Co., is one of those in that very exclusive list of businesses that I constantly recommend to other small business owners.
Why? Because he has built—or really, he and his incredible team have built—an amazing legal resource for small business owners, and they've done it in a way that allows small business owners to not be afraid of seeking and being proactive about getting legal advice.
I love so much that he’s coming on today’s podcast because he started Burch & Co., I think, around 2016, which is the same time I started my business. He had a very distinctive vision: to create a law firm that genuinely puts people first.
Now, if you’ve ever had to go and see a lawyer, often it can be a very daunting experience, as if they put themselves on a higher pedestal above the average person. He talks about that in the podcast and what drove him to move from working in those sorts of firms to starting his own.
His approach to legal services is really built on the fundamental belief that engaging with the law should be enjoyable—which is not something you usually think about when seeking out a lawyer. It’s often seen as something you only do when everything, you know, hits the fan.
What makes him really interesting is his professional excellence paired with a personal passion for challenges—not just in his professional life but in his personal life too. He does all of these great things, and Burch & Co. often runs super cool events to bring people together.
And since he started, I think they've served more than a thousand clients, which is huge, and built this amazing team. We talk about how he built that team in today's podcast.
I want to say a personal thank you to Nick because, I think it was before we hit record, I was talking to him about some challenges I've had in my business with staff. Something he said really, really stood out to me: the culture that you build is also about who you let go of, not just about the people that you keep. I thought that was so insightful, and it’s something I've really been thinking about a lot more in terms of where I want this business to go and who I want to bring on board to work in the business.
He's really got an incredible philosophy at Burch & Co. His whole thing is just really built on the idea that small business owners have a lot of legal stuff they maybe don't even realize they’ve got—and should be aware of. How can we make it attractive for them to come in and work with us in a way that's not financially daunting, emotionally draining, or any of the other things?
So really, they're just about trying to make law fun and enjoyable, which I don't think any other law firm is doing so much of. I wanted to bring him in to talk about: what are the legal things that small business owners should know? How can we protect ourselves? When do you go and see a lawyer? What about contracts, employees, and all the things?
Here it is—my interview and my last interview for 2024 with the brilliant Nicholas Burch, founder of Burch & Co.
Hi, Nick. Welcome to the podcast.
Nicholas Burch: Hey, Fiona, how are you?
Fiona Killackey: I'm good. I am so excited because, as I was saying before we hit record, I would have loved to have had you on this years ago. You are somebody I recommend. Probably, I would say there are like two people I recommend all the time, and you are one of those two. So, I'm thrilled to have you finally on the podcast.
Nicholas Burch: Thanks for having me on, and thanks for thinking of me so many times throughout your week to work with people in your community. I really appreciate it.
Fiona Killackey: Oh, you're so welcome. I always like to ask people: how are you feeling today? How are you feeling about life right now?
Nicholas Burch: I'm feeling good, and thanks for asking the question. It’s always good, I think, to stop and actually give a genuine answer to that question rather than just saying, "Yeah, I’m good." I *am* good. I’m tired. It feels like it has been, for a lot of people in our community, a very heavy year. We’ve been trying our best, I think, to shine as much light around the place as we can. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to a good break in the sun over summer.
Fiona Killackey: Oh, me too. I am *hanging*. To be honest, I try and take all of January off as a reward to myself because I was never allowed to when I worked in retail.
Nicholas Burch: That was the breakout period.
Fiona Killackey: Yes! Everyone else would be on holiday, and it’d be like, "No, we’re in e-commerce. We can’t take a break, you know, in that summer period or the January period."
For those listening who have not been lucky enough to understand who you are or work with Burch & Co., your business—what is Burch & Co., who do you help, and also, why did you decide to start a business like this?
Nicholas Burch: Who would be silly enough to do so? I am a lawyer. Burch & Co. is the law firm that I founded nearly nine years ago now, and that time has gone incredibly fast.
I guess I started the firm nine years ago with a mission to prove that lawyers can be useful, that being a lawyer can be a personally fulfilling career, and that the lawyers in our team could look forward to and be proud to go to work each day.
You could go to a pub, a party, or a family event and say, "Hey, I’m a lawyer," and not brace yourself for the bad lawyer joke that comes back the other way, or for someone saying, "Oh, I hope I never need to use you," or "Are you billing me for this conversation?"
And yeah, that’s why I started the firm. I guess I got into law with a desire to help people. And so far, so good.
Fiona Killackey: Yes! And you do a great job because everyone who’s ever worked with you that I know has said, "It’s been lovely, and he’s so lovely—and your whole team." It’s not just you, but your whole team.
On that whole idea of, you know, people saying, "Oh, are you billing me for this?"—there is that perception that lawyers are super scary and also incredibly expensive. Why do you think there’s that perception out in the marketplace? A lot of small business owners will be like, "Oh no, no, I don’t need to go see a lawyer. I’m not full of money right now."
Nicholas Burch: And I think if we as lawyers stop and think about that perception, it’s a justified perception. I think for hundreds of years, lawyers have held themselves out as these masters of some kind of dark art, making it an expensive, scary experience to go and see your lawyer.
Yes, the law is complex. Yes, it can be daunting. But it’s also a fascinating beast, and it can be incredibly useful to all people—businesses, companies, individuals—if you can find someone who’s willing to take the time to listen to what’s going on for you and unpack how the law can be useful in that scenario.
That I think for a long time, lawyers have seen themselves as kind of above the fray of service providers instead of being active participants in a professional services context.
Nicholas Burch: And as a result, I think that clients put off going to see their lawyer and traditionally avoid it because they don't know how much it's going to cost. And I guess, like, why would you go to a lawyer if you feel like you've got to put on your best clothes and haul into the city, hike up 30 floors above the footpath in an oxygen-deprived room, and be told how hard everything is, and then get whacked with a big invoice on the way out the door and feel none the wiser for the experience? I can understand why people don't want to deal with them, which is why with our firm, I set it up with the desire or the mission to always be useful, to actually be able to answer the question: "Well, what would you do if you were me, Nick?"
And the only way that I can answer that question, or any of my team can answer that question, is by actually listening enough and caring enough about our clients and our community to know what's going on for them so that you can genuinely say, "Well, because Maureen is going on maternity leave in three months' time, then perhaps you should employ this person," to actually be able to have a constructive, useful, commercial opinion in relation to it.
But our industry is changing, and that's what I'm excited about. And what I'm proud about is the impact that firms like ours are having. Lawyers are realising that they can't just sit above the fray, offer risk-averse opinions, and think that that's good enough.
Fiona Killackey: Yes. And I think there'll be so many people listening to this thinking, "Gosh, that's refreshing to hear." And also, there'll be people listening to this—and we are very lucky to have a big global reach, which is nice. Thank you for listening.
But if someone's listening to this, and they're yet to start a business, or maybe they're early in, or maybe they don't have staff, and they're thinking, "This doesn't really apply to me, and I'll only see them when a big problem arises"—and I have to say that most of the people I've sent to you, it's because something has happened, and I'm like, "Go and see Nick." But what would you say to anyone listening who's thinking, "I don't really need to see somebody until stuff hits the fan"?
Nicholas Burch: Yeah. And I can totally understand that mindset. But from my lived experience and seeing the impact that we can have on setting businesses and companies up for success, planning for that success, imagining what the future—the ideal future—will look like, and working back from there, putting the building blocks in place from a legal perspective to make that pathway to success as smooth and as many lanes as possible to make it most likely a rewarding experience.
Having good legal frameworks in place isn't just insurance against disaster, but it's also, I guess, the implementation of previous learnings across all commercial matters to actually see what's going to work. I think businesses can give themselves the best chance of success by having confidence and certainty in relation to every step that they take along their journey.
And it's great to get excited about the first 12 months of a business to organically see how we can take this idea, see where it goes. But there comes a point in time in every successful business that's ever been where the controlling minds of the company and the business have sat down and actually thought about an intentional pathway to success—an intentional pathway to exit, whatever that might look like—and work back from there.
What kind of legal framework do we need to give that the greatest chance of success? The happiest business owners and the most successful business owners are those that have that sense of confidence and certainty that every decision they make, they know, is coming back to that strategy or that step towards their goal. Without that framework, it's difficult to know that the decisions you're making or the opportunities you're taking or passing up are actually the right ones to make.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah. And having that—I just actually recorded the audio version of Passion, Purpose, Profit this week, and I was reading out the crews that people should cultivate around their business. And one of them was these people with skills, experience, and knowledge that you just don't have, and also that you don't want to go and figure out—you don't want to go and get a law degree.
But one of them is a lawyer. One of them is a really good accountant. When I had my accountant, I actually interviewed them on the podcast as well. You just—you don't know what you don't know. But I'm so confident with my accountant and knowing, "Yep, they've got it sorted." If something comes up, if the policy changes with tax, if something—you know—they're there, they're in my corner. And it's the same.
Nicholas Burch: I've got one of those too.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah. And it's like—and that's what you also want with a lawyer. So what are some things that maybe small business owners are not aware of or would find surprising? That is a legal thing.
I remember years ago when you came in and kindly did a masterclass in something that I was doing, and you were talking about—and I'm just paraphrasing—but you were saying something around like that graphic designers, unless they've given you the rights to the logo, it's technically legally theirs.
And things that people just don't know. Are there other things like that, that small business owners might be like, "I had no idea that when somebody creates my website or does something else that they own it or they don't own it?" You can tell I'm not a lawyer.
Nicholas Burch: You could have fooled me. Actually, I do remember that masterclass that we were a part of, and it sounds like that was kind of an intellectual property focus at that time. And so I'll try to get something from another area of law for this time. Hopefully, it's as interesting as that last one.
But something that springs to mind is what I think is some really cool stuff happening in the area of the ownership of personal property at the moment, and that small businesses should know about. There's a whole body of regulation and laws around security over personal property. And basically, what the law is at the moment is that possession is the law.
So even if, let's say, you're a small business and you've got some equipment that's off your site and it's on your client's site—you might be an installer of coffee machines in cafes or fridges in a cafe or some building equipment on a construction site—the regime that exists these days is unless you have registered your ownership of that piece of equipment, if your client (the cafe in the coffee machine scenario) were to go insolvent and an administrator were appointed, the administrator would be entitled to take ownership of that coffee machine and sell it as if it were an asset of the cafe.
Fiona Killackey: Wow. Even though you own it?
Nicholas Burch: Even though you own it. And it comes down to possession being ownership unless you have registered your ownership on this whole big database called the Personal Property Securities Register. It's the same way like the bank has a mortgage over your house, and someone can go and do a search of the titles, and they can say, "Alright, Fiona's house—she's got a mortgage with the Commonwealth Bank."
Fiona Killackey: That's exactly who we have a mortgage with! I promise I didn't—what have you been doing, Nick? Yes, we are with CBA.
Nicholas Burch: It's a similar thing with personal property. So you can go on and search against a company or an individual and see who has registered interests against their assets. Then, if you are looking at a specific asset, you can search that specific asset to see who may have a registration over it.
Now, as you can imagine, this is kind of like a recipe for disaster if the small business isn't aware of the regime and also if they haven't complied technically with what's required as evidence of their ownership of this equipment.
Fiona Killackey: Does that include, like, let's say you're a small business owner, and you've decided to rent an office in a co-working space, and you've got all your, you know, beautiful armchairs and your whole setup and everything. Is that the same—that unless you have specified, "All the stuff in that office is mine, including all my equipment," but if you leave it there and, let's say, the co-working space shuts down (which quite a few of them have recently), that could happen?
Nicholas Burch: That is a big risk, and it comes back to the nature of whether you're on a sublease or whether you're on a licence. Most of the co-working spaces—I operate out of co-working spaces here and in Sydney as part of the Commons network—and we're just on a licence. So yeah, it would be difficult, and there would be a fair argument to be had between us and the administrator or liquidator.
Fiona Killackey: And you're also a lawyer, so they wouldn't want to cover—they'd be like, "These people know their stuff."
Nicholas Burch: Well, we've got some nice chairs in here, Fiona, worth fighting over. It's definitely something that we should be taking good care of and intentionally ensuring that our best interests are protected in those scenarios.
Fiona Killackey: Wow, I had no idea about that stuff. And so in your business, you've talked about the fact that you do things differently. And yes, the law is changing, and lots of legal firms are maybe changing a little bit, but it is—I feel like it's much like the health industry. It takes a long time for things.
Nicholas Burch: To change and adapt—even slower than health.
Fiona Killackey: Really? Oh, wow. Okay. And so when you started it—and it's funny that you said nine years because we must have started around the same time because I started at the very, very end of 2015, very start of 2016.
And so when you put yourself out there, were you worried about putting yourself out there and doing things differently? You guys also have—one of the things that I think a lot of people are attracted to is that some of what you offer is a flat rate fee. You know, so people, even if they're going to have a few conversations, they just have this one fee that's talked about at the start. Were you worried you were going to shoot yourself in the foot, that the model wasn't going to work? Or were you like, "No"? And then also, how did you get into the right place so small business owners knew you existed?
Nicholas Burch: Yeah. I think you're giving me far more credit than I deserve. But I didn't think about it too deeply before I started.
Fiona Killackey: Okay. Sometimes that's the best thing—you've just got to jump off and—
Nicholas Burch: I think so. I thought about what is the worst-case scenario that could happen here. And the worst-case scenario was that I could go back to being a sad lawyer in a large firm, getting paid pretty well but not living my best life until I could then sort out something else I wanted to do with my life.
Nicholas Burch: And if that was the worst-case scenario, I could live with that.
Nicholas Burch: And so I thought, well, why not give it a crack? Starting the firm was kind of like a last roll of the dice in relation to whether or not I could find a fulfilling existence as a professional services lawyer.
Nicholas Burch: And yeah, I was pretty much done with how other law firms went about business—the way they treated their staff, six-minute billable increments, the way they kind of crushed people's dreams and aspirations and tied them to their desks. It was, yeah, not a good life, not good—not a good time.
So I brought my vision and my plan to the group of directors I was with at the time and had been told no, probably for the third time: "No, what would you know? That would never work." And so I was kind of faced with the choice to either give it a crack and prove it or continue to try to change the environment I was in.
And so it seemed easier to start a place from the ground up with the pillars and principles I believed in. What I did do is I went and had some open conversations with the client community I was working with at the time about what their ideal working relationship with their lawyer would be.
It was quite interesting and illuminating—the common themes and common threads that came back from those discussions. They were, as you've alluded to, around certainty of price and the utility of the actual advice they were going to get.
So it was kind of like, based on those pillars of fixed project fees across the board, and ensuring that all pieces of advice had at the end of it, "Well, if I were you, this is what I would do," or, "These are three options; let's talk about them," that's why I started the place.
And I think I got very, very lucky that there was this core group of clients and referrers who were willing to take a chance and give me work from day one. That meant that we had something to do.
When it comes to that fee structure—yeah, I got it wrong, like probably 50% of the time, around whether or not we'd captured the value that we delivered in the work. Probably really good at it now. The concept of talking about the value of the work tied to how long it takes rarely happens these days. It's actually about how valuable this piece of work is to the client.
Where do they value it on their spectrum of priorities around the importance of the work? Is it a low-priority, simple piece of work that they're not going to want to spend a lot of money on? Then that's where it's priced.
If it's a key strategic piece of work that's going to be important to where the company's direction is for the next five years, then there's a price attached to it.
And I also I consider myself really fortunate that the beautiful group of people who have taken a chance—I guess, left the well-trodden, well-worn conveyor belt to partnership even in large and medium-sized law firms. If you stick around long enough and tough it through, life does get better at the other end of it—or so I've been told.
But to jump off that conveyor belt and put their trust and faith in me and my vision for what it can be like as a lawyer—for them to be vulnerable in an environment like ours—that leap of faith isn't lost on me either.
So I guess that was a very long-winded answer to the question of what, like, how did you go about it? I think I owe a lot of it to the people who gave us work to do and the people who came to work with us throughout the journey.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah, I think it's so important that, you know, even a lawyer would say, "Some of it we got wrong, some of the pricing strategy we didn't know."
And I think at the start—like if I think back to some of the stuff, I remember in my first year of business going, "Oh my God, I charged for like four hours, and I have now spent 27 hours pulling this together."
And like, this is not gonna work if I keep charging like that. But then you realise and you learn and you go, "Okay." And then you have to put prices up or you have to do stuff.
But then you think, well, the confidence that comes from—you know, sometimes we've had somebody do just a one-off coaching session, and it's expensive for one hour, but then they go, "Oh my God, I can go forward, and now I know this, this, this," or, "This has totally changed."
I had one client who was like, "Oh my God, within 10 minutes, you'd completely shifted the way I saw my brand." And it's like, great, you know.
And I think the same with—I know the people just recently in particular, I've got somebody who's working with you, and I just know that there's confidence there. And that confidence—it's invaluable to be like, "Oh, okay, I've got my ducks in a row, I've got, you know, what I need."
Nicholas Burch: Yeah. And that's what we're here to do. We're here to inspire confidence in people, to get the results that they're looking for, and to help, like you do, articulate what they want.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah. What are you trying to do here?
Nicholas Burch: Yeah. And it's a seemingly simple question, but the number of times that that is the bulk of a one-hour meeting or a week-long exchange of emails and messages is articulating what the desired outcome is—before we go back to the start of working out how we're going to get there.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah. I mean, it's so simple. It's also something that's huge in marketing. People don't look at what their desired outcome is. They just think, "Someone told me I need to post three times a day, so I will."
And there's no objective, there's no strategy, and then it's like, "Social media isn't working for me." And it's like, because you didn't think, "What's the end? What are we trying to do here?"
Fiona Killackey: But you did say that one of the things you're really grateful for is the people that came on board to work with you and, you know, appreciate your vision and got on there. And you seem to attract a lot of people who like working with you.
My interactions with your colleagues—they're always very friendly, very, like, seem to love what they do. You see your stuff on social media, you guys do events, and so how have you, like, really cultivated a group of people who like what they do?
Particularly when you are in law and you are in, like, to some degree, conflict resolution, and you're probably dealing with people who are very stressed out and potentially upset and all the other things. So yeah, how do you cultivate that great team culture?
Nicholas Burch: I agree with you. The team that we've curated here is an incredible group of self-actualized, smart, beautiful, empathetic humans first—and they're also lawyers. But just because you're a lawyer doesn't mean that you can't be all of those other things.
It doesn't mean that you can't be your authentic self in relation to how you deal with a problematic lawyer on the other side of an adversarial matter. I think a lot of lawyers forget that it's not a personal conflict between lawyers in relation to these disputes.
Our clients might be in dispute about something, but it doesn't mean the lawyers have to behave in a way that's terrible to each other. We've all got a job to do, and the flowery language, the banging of the table, and the needless aggression, for me, doesn't have a place in resolving it.
Yes, there might be a time for dramatic effect—you might do it—but if you're yelling at people all day on the phone, then it can kind of get tiresome pretty quickly.
In relation to our culture, it comes back to this: we've created an environment where it's safe to be your authentic self, and that's demanded of you. People can sniff out a pretender pretty quickly in here.
I can't pretend to be somebody else. I tried that in a big law environment, and it didn't feel very great. And we're a values-based organization, not a rules-based one. So all that decision-making comes back to our four key pillars and principles.
They're talked about often, used on a daily basis, and we have fun. Just because we're lawyers and the work we do is incredibly serious for our clients doesn't mean that we have to take ourselves so seriously.
We need to counterbalance that with a bit of a reality check sometimes, like, "Nick, you've been a bit of a git. How about you lighten up?"
And I think that's what makes the culture in and around here so good—that we prioritize the relationships between each other. It's important as lawyers that you feel like you are a part of a team, that the people around you have your back, and that we're not in competition with each other.
That's rare in our industry. Often, lawyers, even within firms, are pitted against each other—who's going to get the promotion, who's got the largest number of billable hours, who's in the office the longest each day.
We've got none of that crap here. We don't have billable budgetary targets. We don't report on the amount of work that an individual has done in a day. Everything is reported on a team-wide basis. We've got team-wide goals.
We've got a whole bunch of non-financial metrics that we measure our success by, which, again, hasn't been easy to do. As lawyers, that's not how we're trained. We're trained to judge our self-worth on the number of six-minute increments we've recorded each day.
"Am I in the red zone or the green zone on the work I did the previous day?" It takes a long time to beat that mindset out of ourselves. I think we're there now. We've got our other measurables, we've got our other metrics, and they're working well.
Fiona Killackey: I love this so much because I'm constantly hammering on to clients about, "What are your metrics for success outside of money?"
For me, it's that I work three days a week, that I can pick up my kids, that I can go to stuff. You know, no one can see me right now, but I'm wearing a tracksuit. I'm just comfortable. I can go for a walk.
In the middle of today, we went and picked up a couch from Facebook Marketplace. I can go and do stuff because that's success. That's success—having the freedom to say, "Oh my God, I want that blue couch. I'm going to get it today," and not think, "Oh, you're not allowed to leave before 5. You're not allowed to do this."
So I just think, congratulations, and also you're an amazing role model to the people that work with you because often, the top-down leadership shapes the environment and the culture.
Nicholas Burch: Well, like you, Fiona, I set up this place so I could live the lifestyle that I wanted to live.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah.
Nicholas Burch: If I'm not willing to take advantage of that and do it, then stupid me. And if I'm going to do it, then why shouldn't everyone else do it?
I've got two young kids.
Fiona Killackey: Yes.
Nicholas Burch: My darling wife's about to go back to work full-time. It's time for me now to maybe take a couple of steps back from face time in here.
I'll be at home for probably two, two and a half days a week next year, and the team's going to be fine with that. I've got quite a few parents of young kids on the team, and again, I'm eager to prove that parents of kids, male or female, can be successful lawyers and not have their career progression either delayed or slowed as a result of that. That it is possible.
Fiona Killackey: I love that so much because I was actually going to ask you, because women get asked all the time, how do you deal with it when you have kids? But you've just answered that, so that you're going to work less and be there and be present. And how awesome for you to have that bonding time with your kids too.
Like, my husband worked part-time during that period, and he always talks about how awesome that was—just that hands-on time all the time with the kids.
Nicholas Burch: Yeah, and I'm looking forward to it.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah, how exciting! And congrats on your kids because I know one was just very recently born.
Nicholas Burch: Yeah, he's still pretty fresh.
Fiona Killackey: Yes. And so let's get into some juicy details—not too juicy, because obviously you've got confidentiality and everything else. But what are some of the worst cases, if you're able to confidentially kind of mention them, that maybe small business owners could have even prevented if they'd seen a lawyer beforehand, or things that didn’t have to be so huge?
Nicholas Burch: The big ones that stick out for me, Fiona, are the ones that have, if not jeopardized—if not destroyed the business entirely—have jeopardized them to the extent that they have been on the brink of failure.
And I guess they can fall into the category of an unwillingness of co-partners, co-venturers, or co-owners to have crucial conversations early on in the formation of their business or their partnership.
And as Australians, culturally, we're no good at talking about money to each other. We're very reluctant to actually get people to sign things. I think it's changing, which is great. But historically, if you were to ask someone to sign a document or an agreement, often the response would be, "Oh, don't you trust me, mate?" or, "A handshake is as good as my bond."
Which is great, and no one's saying that’s not a good way to do business. However, there is an underlying lack of clarity that comes from those arrangements and assumptions that, often with time, are proved to be incorrect.
So, the large-scale, disappointing, sad disasters that I've seen in my time are where people haven’t taken the time to invest in that relationship with each other—whether it be two, three, four, five, however many partners—that you’ve got to actually sit down, look each other in the eyes, take a breath, and say, "Right-o. This is the set of promises that I'm going to make towards the success of the company. Are you all on board with what I'm bringing to the table?"
And, "I'm in this for five years, and in five years’ time, I'm going to be looking to step back to three days so I can be on canteen duty for my kids, so that I can go and live in Europe for six months." To actually have those conversations in the early stages, rather than sweeping those kinds of things under the rug along the journey and just letting things fester.
Because the longer that we let things fester, as you know as well as I do, Fiona, there comes a point in time where people can no longer keep the cork on top.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah.
Nicholas Burch: And that’s where we’re in the disaster zone and risk mitigation zone and survival zone. But if early on, one of the partners had—if they were starting to have that feeling of underlying resentment, uncertainty, or a lack of clarity—had the conversation, then, "Hey, just noticing that you said to Janine that you're going to be in here only four days a week next year. I didn’t know about that."
Or, even better still, when you’re forming the company together or in the early stages, just having a conversation—or a facilitated conversation, if that’s going to be less of a daunting environment. And we’ve got some checklists that we deploy to our early-stage small businesses and startups to facilitate those chats. They come together with just a simple kind of playbook around, "Well, this is how we’re going to deal with each other. This is what we’re going to do in certain scenarios along the way."
If one of us gets sick, if someone comes along and wants to buy us, if someone wants to take an extended leave, if someone has a kid—to actually invest two hours, an afternoon, however long, and hopefully come out with some kind of documented agreement or playbook at the end of it—would have avoided so many companies not being as successful as they should have been because of human interactions that have not ended well.
Fiona Killackey: Oh, my goodness. There’s so much in that. I remember working with some people, and they had been in partnership for, I don’t know, 15 years, but they’d been really close friends for 25.
And it got to such a point that I had to stop the call and say, "This is not going anywhere, guys." And I suggested that they see a business psychologist, which they did.
But it’s like—you’ve got this quarter-of-a-century friendship, you have families that know each other, you have everything. Do you really want to completely destroy that over…? They had a particular scenario that was happening.
So, I definitely think those conversations upfront. And also, my husband and I were both raised Catholic. We don’t really practice, but one thing the Catholic Church does—a lot of things wrong, a lot, don’t get me started—but one thing that I think they do well is that when you get married…
I don’t know if they still do this—we got married like almost 20 years ago—but you have to take an exam. And it’s a multiple-choice exam of 180 questions.
And it gets sent through some system, and then it looks at the things you disagree on. And then you have to do forcible—you have to go and do marriage counseling before you get married to discuss the things that you don’t agree on.
And we did it for three hours, and we still talk about that now, like how good that session was because it’s that whole preemptive, "Hey, these two things you don’t really see eye-to-eye on, or you’ve had very different upbringings, so let’s talk about them."
And it’s so much better.
Nicholas Burch: Yeah, yeah.
Fiona Killackey: It’s fascinating.
Nicholas Burch: Great example. Great example.
Fiona Killackey: Yes. Although I do remember when we did the exam because you do it with heaps of other couples, they said that there'd been people who didn’t know each other’s surnames when they went to write. So they were like, "If you’re in that situation, we advise maybe not getting married right away."
So yes, it was really, it was quite fascinating. And it was at Melbourne Uni, so you really felt like you were taking an exam. It was. And my husband, I remember him whispering like, "What did you put for this?" And I was like, "No, no, we just put our own answers."
Okay, so back to this. I work with a lot of people that are working organically, whether they’re in a business partnership, or maybe they’ve got a friend that’s come on to help them, or a sister has come in, and they don’t want to—or they think, "I shouldn’t put down a contract because it’s my cousin, and I don’t..." You know, exactly what you said before, like, "I don’t want her to feel that I don’t trust her."
And so, yeah. What advice do you give to people who are in that situation? Like, "It’s my sister. I shouldn’t have to ask her for a contract."
Nicholas Burch: Yeah. And if you care as much about your sister or your cousin, for all the reasons why you say that you shouldn’t give them the contract, that’s the reason why you should. That if you want to ensure the confidence in that relationship moving forward, you’ve got to be clear.
Fiona Killackey: Hm.
Nicholas Burch: Clarity is queen when it comes to these kinds of arrangements. Assumptions are dangerous.
And almost as dangerous is going on the Internet and trying to find something that you think fits what it is that you’re trying to achieve, downloading it, and putting it in front of someone. It’s actually not fit for purpose and can do more harm than good.
There are some good AI tools around, though, so if people are not wanting to engage with a lawyer and they just want to have something in place, there are some good AI functions that can help out. And I’m more here for that approach as opposed to just ripping off an American-style template from the Internet if that’s where you want to go.
But ideally, having just a standard form—if at all, if it’s at all a possibility that your company or your business is going to need some help from someone—to invest in just a very simple standard form of terms of engagement that’s ready to either attach to an email or just link in an email to keep the conversation going forward around onboarding someone.
Then invest the 500 bucks to do so. It can be drafted in the language of your business, in the same branding as your business. It doesn’t have to be complicated and drafted in scary legal language.
That’s a big part of what I enjoy about my job—like trying to draft complex legal concepts in my own voice or in the voice of a particular client who has invested heavily in their brand positioning and tone of voice of the company. To actually then match up the agreements with that tone of voice is—it’s actually a lot of fun.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah, I can so imagine.
Nicholas Burch: I’m Nick, and I’m a word nerd.
Fiona Killackey: You’ll have a side business soon. It’ll be like, "I can do content strategy and voice."
Nicholas Burch: No, no, there are plenty of people better at that than me. But that’s what I suggest.
Early days in your business, if you’re starting to grow and you’re going to be bringing people on, invest in a template that you can then deploy as many times as you like. But it sets out the key fundamentals, like a clear description of the services that you’re expecting the person to perform, the SLAs around timeframes of response, days available, the quality of work, so that you can make sure that you are aligned around expectations.
That there is a transfer of the intellectual property that’s created to you and your business. That your expectations around confidentiality—please don’t go yapping about my business at family lunches—this is a business relationship, and it’s an important relationship.
And I’m trusting you to come into my business, and I respect you and value you to bring you in. So let’s make sure that we’re on the same page, that we’re doing something together here.
Yeah, it can be really simple with just those heads of topics to make sure that everyone can move forward with confidence and clarity.
Fiona Killackey: Amazing. Ah. One thing I would like to see what you would say about this is that I imagine that your job is part psychologist, part lawyer, and you’re dealing with people’s emotions.
How do you take the emotion out of something when it has gone wrong? Like I know I was saying to you before we hit record that we’ve had a situation, and I’ve done a whole podcast on it, that was very hard for me to detach from within my work because there was, you know, emotions.
And so, how do you take the emotion out of something when you know stuff just needs to be fixed or you need to get going with something legal?
Nicholas Burch: Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s a great thing to consider. I actually studied a psychology degree while I was in law school.
Fiona Killackey: Perfect.
Nicholas Burch: It's coming far more than I thought it would have at the time of studying it. But I actually think that emotions are great. We are all human, and showing emotions shows that we really care about something.
I think to ignore the fact that we are hurt by something, concerned by something, or confused by something is going to cloud our judgment across all the decisions that we make. However, they're not always useful in a rational thought process, and they're not always useful in being able to see the future and look after our future selves.
Once this initial wave of hurt feelings has subsided, what am I going to be thankful for? What I try to do is acknowledge the emotions—go on the journey, don’t inflame them. We’re not here to barrack; we’re here to find a solution. Acknowledge them, but focus the conversation on what a win is going to look like for us.
Move the focus away from what other people might be doing or not doing and move the conversation back to: "Well, what do we want? What is the ideal scenario on our side of the court? What is the outcome that we’re desiring?"
Is it that I don’t want any tentacles of my life intersecting with the tentacles of other people I used to be in business with? Is getting that clear air and clear break our desired outcome? Is maximizing the financial return the desired endgame? Is owning the big chunk of intellectual property for myself what’s going to be most beneficial to me?
Nicholas Burch: And then working back from there—there’s a slogan on the inside of one of my yoga tops, and it says, *Without goals, you can’t score.*
Fiona Killackey: Oh, I love that. I love it. It’s on your yoga top?
Nicholas Burch: I discovered it only recently—"Oh, how long has that been in there for?" But it’s a really good reminder, I think, that it’s all well and good to get hurt and upset—it’s real and it’s human. But unless we can actually articulate, "Well, what do you want?" we shouldn’t take any steps toward a resolution until we know that.
Because otherwise, we’re just hosing a flame and being reactive to what other people are doing rather than responding in a strategic and methodical way toward a pathway that’s going to deliver a good outcome for us.
Fiona Killackey: Amazing. Thank you. I feel like you’re talking right to me at the moment, so thank you. You help so many small business owners, and I know you’ll help so many people listening to this podcast today as well. Who has helped you? Have you sought out other lawyers or mentors?
Nicholas Burch: I have been helped a lot. As I said earlier, I am the grateful beneficiary of a lot of trust and faith that some important people have put in me and my firm along this journey.
Victoria, who is on my team and leads our corporate team, has been with the firm almost its entire time. She has helped me a lot. Without her vision, belief in what we’re doing, and her technical skills, the firm wouldn’t be where it’s at now. I seek out her counsel and her guidance.
There are other lawyers in the profession who were my mentors when I was first starting out. A couple of them are no longer in the profession, and I use them as a sounding board to say, "Hey, what do you think of this?"
But similar to you, like my accountant—I rely on him heavily. The bank was a big supporter of ours, and also he’s a good friend of mine, so I reach out to him. I’ve got some friends who are partners at some of the consulting firms—PwC, Deloitte—who have been on a similar journey to me during their careers. So I’ve got a great supportive network around me that I really rely on heavily.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah.
Nicholas Burch: Also, my wife is a big part of my support network as well. So no, I am very, very lucky.
Fiona Killackey: I love that answer. And so, what are you most proud of? I always love to finish with this. What are you most proud of from your journey in business so far?
Nicholas Burch: I’m proud of the team that I’ve got at the moment. If you had said to me nine years ago that on my team there would be around 20 beautiful, talented, smart lawyers who have chosen to come and work at my firm from the large firms in town, and that they see this firm as a compelling career opportunity for them, that they were going to get on board and move their lives forward, then I would have been ecstatic.
I think that’s what I’m most proud of. Yep, we’ve done a huge body of great legal work for great clients along the way, and there are some matters that I’m really proud of—the outcomes that we’ve achieved for our clients during that time.
I’m immensely proud of the client community that we’ve assembled during this time. But I think I’m most proud of the calibre of the people that I get to work with every day, and I’m pretty chuffed that they have been willing to hitch their wagon to this firm.
Fiona Killackey: Oh, it’s been such a lovely chat. How can people connect with you and find out more about Virt and Company? Or if they’re listening and thinking, "Okay, that’s it, I’m going to bite the bullet and get in touch because I need a lawyer," where is the best place? And also, what’s coming up next for you?
Nicholas Burch: We’re moving our headquarters, actually. We’re part of the Commons network of co-working spaces, and the Commons are opening a new flagship space on Collins Street in the city.
Fiona Killackey: I was going to say—you’re not moving out of Melbourne, are you?
Nicholas Burch: No, no, no. So we're moving to 55 Collins in a couple of weeks' time. It’s where our home clubhouse will be. It’s in the district's fanciest area, and I’m looking forward to getting back into the city. It’s been almost 10 years since I’ve worked in the CBD, and I think Christmas is a good time for us to go back.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah. And you’ve got Haigh’s, the chocolate shop, just up the road from you.
Nicholas Burch: So many dangers. So many dangerous shops just nearby.
Fiona Killackey: Yes. Oh, wow.
Nicholas Burch: And also, we’ve just unveiled our five-year—what’s the word—2030 kind of strategy of what we want to do with the firm moving forward from here.
I think we’ve proved that the model of fixed project fees and a positive working environment can work, and that you can build a successful law firm around those concepts. And now the challenge for us is, what impact can we have on the legal profession locally?
Is it scalable? How much can we scale this without it diluting the impact on an individual and team level? So that’s our challenge for the next six years, and I’m looking forward to it. I’m confident that we’ve got the team leaders in place to really drive that growth and impact because that’s what we’re here doing.
That’s what I want to do over the next five to six years: have a positive impact on as many clients and referrers within our community and build them up to be as successful as we possibly can.
How can people contact us? Our website is burchlawyers.com.au. There’s a contact page on there. And also, like I said, we’re part of the Commons network, so if anyone on the podcast or part of Fiona’s community is also part of the Commons, feel free to drop by.
Fiona Killackey: Yay! Well, thank you so much, and we will link to everything in the show notes. But it’s *Burch*—B-U-R-C-H—and Co. And yeah, we’ll link to all of that. Thank you so much, Nick, for taking the time for this and for all the help that you have provided over the years.
Nicholas Burch: Fiona, thank you. Thank you for all that you do and, yeah, the wonderful work and the inspiration that you give to so many in our joint community. I feel privileged to be a part of your sphere, my friend.
Fiona Killackey: Thank you, thank you, and likewise. Bye.
Nicholas Burch: Take care.
Fiona Killackey: How lovely is Nich? Honestly, he makes law actually fun and enjoyable to talk about and discuss. And yeah, there are so many insights in there. So, I’m going to share two things that really stood out as always.
But if you want to go and connect with Nick, you can check out burchlawyers.com.au—that’s B-U-R-C-H lawyers.com.au. Another thing we didn’t really talk about here is that they have an incredible startup hub.
If you’re in a startup and really want to get access to incredible legal information, you can go to burchlawyers.com.au/startuphub, and we’ll link to that in the show notes as well. We’ll also link to their Instagram, which is lovely and just gives you more insight into who they are as real people.
And again, with lawyers, you don’t always get that sort of human approach. So, you can check them out at Burch Co—C-O. Again, Burch is B-U-R-C-H Co. And we’ll link to them, their Instagram, and everything else in the show notes for this episode, which you’ll find at mysdailybusiness.com/podcast476.
Alright, two things that stood out amongst so many. Honestly, there were lots of ideas, and I was like, *Ah, which two will I choose?*
I think one of the biggest ones—because I think this is a really hard thing to do, particularly when things go wrong—is when Nick talked about focusing on solutions, not emotions. He said something like, *We’re not here to barrack; we’re here to find a solution.*
We’re not trying to, like in a football match, have two sides going full-on against each other. We’re just here to try to find a solution. And I love that he said, *Just focus the conversation on what a win is going to look like.* Because if you can’t articulate what a good outcome is, then how are we going to go in and try and find that for you?
I love, love, love that he said, *We acknowledge the emotions, but we go on the journey and don’t inflame those emotions.* Because especially if somebody’s done you wrong—like an employee, a customer, or a partnership that’s gone sour—it can be really easy to get super caught up in the emotional part of it, as opposed to just looking at things rationally and going, *Okay, okay, this is where we find ourselves. Where do we want to go? Where do we want to find ourselves in the future?*
And then how do we utilize legal services to get there? So, I love that so much—just focus on solutions, not emotions.
And then, you know, really, I love that he talked about having clear legal frameworks early on and not waiting until something catastrophic happens. But to really come to a point early on and say, *I need to invest in this, and I’m going to put time and money against it.*
Things like investing in standard templates—he said something like, *If you’re going to grow and bring people on, then you want to invest in a template that you can then deploy over and over again.*
And having things like a clear description of services, expectations around confidentiality, and treating it as a business relationship—even if you’re bringing on friends, family, or your partner—it’s super important. Perhaps even more important in those scenarios to have clear expectations looked at.
I did a workshop yesterday for a bunch of women in business, and one of them—we were talking about this exact thing—was dealing with someone working for them. Without going into anything confidential, it was really like a friendship.
And they had sort of said, *Well, I could do that for you.* And it’s like, *Okay, cool.* And then they had been with them for a long period, and they were like, *I wish I’d had something in place because now it’s really difficult to have that conversation and not potentially threaten the personal relationship that I have with that person as well.*
So, absolutely love this idea of *start as you mean to go on.* Really, start as you mean to go on. And I just think that that is going to always help you. So again, if you are interested—and pretty much everyone should be, if you haven’t got this stuff sorted yourself—check out Burch and Co Lawyers.
Nich is just the loveliest person, so you can always contact him. He has amazing staff that work for him and work with him, I should say, because I feel like he’s that kind of boss that, you know, *we’re all in this together, we’re all here, one team, one dream,* all of that.
So thank you again so much, Nich, for coming on, and thank you, Nich, because he has helped so many of my clients who have gone to Burch and Co after I’ve recommended them, and they’ve said that it’s been an incredible experience. Things like the flat-rate fees, knowing exactly how much money you’re going to be out of pocket, and what that includes—just everything. It’s just a really refreshing way to work on your business and look at the legal perspective with the support of incredible expertise.
So again, it’s burchcolawyers.com.au, and Burch is B-U-R-C-H. You can check them out on all the socials as well, and we’ll link to them in the show notes, which for this episode is mydailybusiness.com/podcast476.
Thank you again. I think there’s a couple more episodes to go—or one more. One more on New Year’s Eve that comes out, a quick tip episode, and then we’ll be into 2025. Again, if you have learned anything from this podcast this year, I would love it so much if you could give me a little end-of-year gift by leaving a review wherever you listen. It really, really helps this podcast get found. We put a lot of effort and time into this podcast, and we just so appreciate when people leave reviews.
Thank you so much for listening. I’ll see you next time. Bye.
