Building Better Businesses #006 "What's Law got to do with it?"

In this occasional series we talk about the inner workings of for profit / for good businesses: we surface common challenges and pitfalls across the various elements of a business, and talk with experts about how to address them. Up next: "What's Law got to do with It?" Join me as I talk with Jim Black, the Managing Partner of Impact GC, about legal considerations for mission-driven businesses. What are some of the basics any business needs to think about, and what are some of the things that can go bump for businesses where purpose and profit intersect? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎯 READY TO BUILD YOUR BUSINESS MODEL? Free Business Model Health Check (5 min): https://www.astridjscholz.com/busines... Business Model Foundations Course: https://www.astridjscholz.com/busines... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📬 STAY CONNECTED: Substack: https://ajscholz.substack.com LinkedIn:   / ajscholz   Instagram: @astridjscholz ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT BUILDING BETTER BUSINESSES: A conversation series for founders building profitable businesses with purpose. Featuring practical operators, investors, and experts sharing frameworks that actually work. Host: Dr. Astrid J. Scholz Co-founder, Zebras Unite ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 Introduction & Welcome 00:00:52 Meet Jim Black – Impact GC & 30 Years in Law 00:02:29 From Big Law to Purpose-Driven Practice 00:04:57 Founding Impact GC: The Non-Extractive Law Firm Model 00:07:17 The Economics: Revenue Sharing, Billing Rates & Soft Hour Caps 00:11:00 Fixed Fees, Low-Bono & Pro-Bono: Making Legal Accessible 00:16:35 The Seductive Treadmill of Big Law – And How to Exit It 00:22:41 How Jim Finds Clients: Values-First Networking 00:25:31 The Outside General Counsel Role for Impact Companies 00:30:31 Common Pitfall: Waiting Too Long to Talk to a Lawyer 00:39:44 How to Find Values-Aligned Legal Support 00:35:00 Fixed-Fee Diagnostics & The Case for a Legal Self-Assessment Tool 00:37:24 AI in Legal Practice: The 80% Rule & What It Can't Replace 00:44:00 Why a Pass-Through Advisor/Law Firm Model Won't Work (Bar Rules) 00:51:25 Impact Finance Templates & the Employee Ownership Frontier 00:55:50 Preparing for Your First Lawyer Conversation (Don't Stress) 00:57:00 Using AI as a Legal Prep Tool – Astrid's Tax Story