Why John Rabil Chose MoonClerk To Streamline Billing For His Law Firm, ELA

John Rabil, founder of Entrepreneur Legal Advisors (ELA), talks with us about whey he switched to MoonClerk and how MoonClerk has helped streamline billing for his law practice.

Can you tell us a little about ELA?

Entrepreneur Legal Advisors (ELA) is a law firm that provides general counsel services to small businesses and entrepreneurs. We’re different than traditional law firms and work on a subscription business model that lets us proactively limit our clients’ potential risks and develop long term strategic relationships as opposed to one-off, transactional reactive services provided by traditional law firms. 

What are your day-to-day responsibilities?

Client management, business development and internal team management.

How did your organization get started?

I was working at a firm doing general practice work, and one client was a business, they were telling me that they had been having a bunch of issues involving independent contractors and employees and they’d had a hard time getting answers from other lawyers, couldn’t figure out how much dealing with these issues would cost them and were simply ignored in a lot of circumstances.  

I was thinking, “There has to be a better way for small businesses to get legal services.” Most small businesses either ignore legal completely (exposing themselves to increased risk they could avoid), use an online platform that doesn’t provide individualized advice, or are faced with options that are too expensive, inaccessible and intimidating, so they don’t do anything.

The challenge in starting ELA was to find a cost effective, affordable, model where business owners could access legal and advisory services as an option to either online services that don’t know their business, then give advice following a one size fits all approach, or to a high-priced attorney, which isn’t realistic for small business. Where was the opportunity in that gap that will really benefit small businesses? 

The answer was subscription based legal services focused on being an advisor first and foremost (this is the true advantage of legal services to small businesses). I offered transparency, affordable pricing, and an efficient way for entrepreneurs and small businesses to proactively address potential risks. 

What have been some key factors in growing your business?

The subscription model was a key factor in our growth. It allows for recurring revenue which is a completely different model than the hourly rate, which is the standard in the legal field. We don’t have to start from scratch every single month and worry about billable hours. We can focus on protecting our clients and building long term relationships.

What do you use MoonClerk for?

We use MoonClerk for as much of our billing as possible. It allows us to set up automatic monthly payments from clients on our subscription model. MoonClerk efficient, mostly hands-off once a client is onboarded and cuts countless admin hours on our end. 

What problems did you have with your previous payment system?

We’ve used several other payment systems over the years, but have focused on trying to get as many people as possible moved over to MoonClerk. The other systems are overly complicated (at least for us) and time consuming to set up. Other issues we’ve run into have been on the user end - clients having trouble getting set up with what we send them. None of those problems exist with MoonClerk.

Those problems slow down everything. They takes additional time on our end, slows down receivables, and frustrates everyone involved.

What made you finally decide to use MoonClerk?

Ease of use for the monthly recurring payment options. Simple as that. I didn’t see another option that was as easy to get started with and to implement with clients.

What was your experience when getting started with MoonClerk?

It has all gone well form the start. MoonClerk’s set up process was self-explanatory and while there is a lot of functionality in the system, it’s not overly complicated for non-tech savvy users. That was particularly important on our end when trying to find the easiest solution possible to get clients set up on a recurring billing platform, both for us and them. 

What specific features do you like most about MoonClerk?

We love the automatic monthly recurring billing. And we have options for any kind of billing we are doing, not just recurring. The simplicity of MoonClerk is one of its strengths, especially when there seems to be an endless race to cram as many features as possible into products these days.

How has MoonClerk improved or helped your business?

MoonClerk essentially takes the billing and chasing clients for money work off our plate. Most law firms spend considerable time billing and collecting money that’s owed to them and they operate on some system where invoices are due within 30 days. As you grow that becomes an administrative burden, that continues to get worse. It eats up significant time at a lot of firms. Not having to deal with any of that is invaluable.

Would you recommend MoonClerk to others?

Absolutely. MoonClerk is a one stop shop for all your billing needs.