When Zak Biggs, Director of Public Affairs at Goodlawyer, attended a webinar hosted by Pocketed’s CEO and Co-Founder, Brianna Blaney, he heard about a grant that he just had to apply to.
Blaney had mentioned that the TECHNATION Career Ready Program was still accepting summer term applications, so he quickly applied through the Pocketed platform and was approved within two days! That’s right — two days!!
“In the absence of Pocketed, I would never have been able to secure this $7,500. Just weeks after learning about the program, we had an intern in our office making valuable contributions to our team.” said Biggs.
Since the initial approval, his team has also been approved for four more students to begin working in September with wage coverage of up to $7,500 per student.
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Goodlawyer is a service that connects entrepreneurs to affordable legal help. Biggs said lawyers have earned a negative reputation for being expensive and intimidating. Goodlawyer is seeking to change this by bringing the practice of law to the 21st century with a user-friendly web platform.
They also did away with the billable hour, replacing it with transparent fixed fee prices, as they recognized this as a common pain point in client experience and a source of anxiety for many.
“Our mission is to make legal help accessible to all entrepreneurs and businesses, not just the wealthy few,” said Biggs.
Biggs is the team member at Goodlawyer in charge of identifying and applying to grant opportunities. He said before he found Pocketed, he would spend hours navigating government websites and overall it was a ‘slog’.
What he liked most about the Pocketed platform was that it made grants ‘more millennial’ and easier to understand. He said when initially creating a Pocketed account, he noticed that the platform shared similarities to Goodlawyer in the way that both companies are modernizing a dated industry and helping small businesses succeed.
“It seems like both Pocketed and Goodlawyer are very much about improving the customer experience, being accessible and welcoming, and trying to remove the intimidation factor that comes with, in your case, navigating the grant funding landscape, and in our case, navigating getting legal help,” said Biggs.
When Biggs found out about the TECHNATION Career Ready Program, he couldn’t believe that he was only now learning about it. As someone who secured many student internship grants in the past, he considers this grant a “diamond in the rough” and the easiest student internship grant he’s ever applied to.
Before COVID-19, Goodlawyer had three full-time employees. Now, their team is home to 15 full-time employees and a handful of part-timers as well. Some of these hires were made possible because of Pocketed and grant funding! Biggs said they are prepared to continue their rapid growth.
He said the key to continuing that growth is to keep leveraging student internship programs that allow them to hire with low financial risk.
“Pocketed helps us leverage these student internship programs, which are an essential part of our growth strategy,” said Biggs.
“As we continue to grow, I’m sure I’ll continue returning to Pocketed to ensure that we’re leveraging the best student internship programs that help us hire more talented young Canadians.”
Do you want to access funding to expand your team, just like Goodlawyer? Create your Pocketed account today!
