Food, Loyola Law School, Reality TV

Loyola L.A. Law Grad Gets Savaged in the Shark Tank

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Jeff Hughes graduated from Loyola Law School – Los Angeles in 1992. Then, like now, law jobs were hard to come by. Hughes didn’t need an LLM in entrepreneurship to come up with an interesting business idea though. He and his paralegal wife decided to start a “coffee & counsel shop” aimed at middle class customers in need of legal services. It sounds like Starbucks, except you can get a skim latte with a shot of probate law.
Improbably, this California business succeeded. Fourteen years later, the baristas are still serving up espresso and express legal services.
Perhaps frightened by the competition, Jeff and Anne Hughes decided to go on the Shark Tank to get help franchising their business of serving up cheap legal services in a coffeehouse setting.
For the uninitiated, the Shark Tank is an ABC reality show, in which entrepreneurs present ideas to a panel of venture capitalists in hopes of getting funding. As you might expect based on the name, the VCs are not cute and cuddly.
When the Hughes made their pitch for $200,000 this week, the VCs smelled blood in the water. The gruesome footage, after the jump.


Jeff Hughes admits that he’s spent more time in coffeehouses than courthouses over the last two decades. Perhaps that’s why he was so bad at presenting his argument:

Why coffee? Why not just a legal services shop? “Nobody would come in because they don’t trust lawyers,” said Jeff Hughes, who explained that a la(w)tee helps people feel comfortable. The reviews of Legal Grind’s two location on Yelp, however, are mixed.
The Sharks also questioned the scalability of the Legal Grind business plan and what they would do with the $200,000 if they did get it. “We’d hire legal consultants” was not the answer the Sharks wanted to hear.
The Sharks gave them the same treatment Biglaw gives many Loyola Law School grads. No offers of money for the Hugheses.
“I’m afraid of getting into business with a bunch of lawyers,” said one Shark.
The Sharks also questioned the legality of waitresses giving out legal advice. Hughes was named a Legal Rebel by the ABA Journal last year. Judging from this video included with the article on Hughes and Legal Grind, it looks like confidentiality is hard to serve in a coffeehouse:

Legal Grind’s website
Shark Tank — Episode 14, Season 1 [Hulu]
Jeffrey Hughes: The Legal Grinder [ABA Journal]

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