The Lawyer's Escape Pod

Dorna Moini is the CEO and founder of Gavel (formerly Documate), an easy-to-use platform for building client-facing legal apps. Prior to starting the company, Dorna was a litigator at Sidley Austin. There, in her pro bono practice, she worked with legal aid organizations to build a web application for domestic violence survivors to complete and file their paperwork, which led to the idea for Documate - to enable other attorneys to do the same in any area of law.

Dorna is on the Legal Services Corporation Emerging Leaders Council and a member of LAFLA's Advisory Board. She was named an ABA Legal Rebel and is on the Fastcase 50 list.

In this conversation, we discussed:

• Dorna’s initial interest in the law was human rights issues


• She ended up in BigLaw and actually enjoyed it!


• Dorna did a lot of pro bono work with domestic violence victims, which prompted her to develop a platform to make legal services more accessible to them; and that evolved to Documate


• Getting to the point where she couldn’t run the business and work at the law full-time


• Her firm offered for her to go part-time, but she decided she wanted to focus completely on her business


• Dorna felt comfortable taking a leap knowing she could always go back to practice


• She experienced a huge learning curve, but found it easy to self-educate with all the resources available


• Getting comfortable with what other people think of you making the jump from law to entrepreneurship


• The fear of regret was larger than the fear of failure


• The importance of building a team that deeply believes in the core mission


• You don’t need to go to business school to start a successful business


• Working hard feels different when your heart is fully in it

Connect with Megan!

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Website: https://www.megansmiley.com/

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Connect with Dorna!

Gavel’s Website: https://www.gavel.io/