Скачать или смотреть Edmund Scanlan, Total Attorneys (2009)

40 UNDER 40: 2009
Tired of bad news? We are, too. So we asked this year's 40 Under 40 honorees to tell us something anything good. And they delivered, with tales of triumph over adversity, inspiration drawn from family and friends, good advice from mentors and lessons learned in this historic economic downturn. Read Edmund Scanlan's profile below.

When Edmund Scanlan strolls though his company's 30,000-square-foot downtown headquarters, he can hardly believe it all began with a laptop and cell phone in his Wicker Park apartment.
Dressed in jeans and untucked button-down shirt, Mr. Scanlan looks like he still could be running Total Attorneys from his living room. But presiding over a company that has 250 employees and revenue that's grown 9,000% to $23.9 million requires a bit more space.
Mr. Scanlan, who attended a small Minnesota college for a year, is mostly self-trained in technology and Web development. "I've taken good lessons from other people," he says. "I learn better in practice than in theory."
He worked for several interactive companies before striking out on his own, creating Total Attorneys — formerly Infra-Strategy — in 2002. His idea: offer small businesses more affordable information technology and marketing services.
Finding that law offices were among his best customers, he decided to focus on an untapped niche: small firms, those with five or fewer attorneys. "Lawyers didn't go to law school to fill out forms, or to answer phones or to run a marketing campaign," he says.
He created a business offering back-office support, call centers, marketing and technology services. He later hired the managing partner of his biggest client, a bankruptcy law firm, to serve as president.
Last year, Mr. Scanlan, whose father, Ed, is a Democratic candidate for Illinois governor, was named to the Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame.
Gerald Hills, professor emeritus of the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Business and member of the Hall of Fame selection committee, says Mr. Scanlan's instinct to pursue small law firms was a good one.
"He's done a great job of carving out a niche in that industry and by putting together the software, engineering and equipment to serve that niche," Mr. Hills says. "Small law firms are, by definition, a few lawyers. They're not trained in marketing and they're definitely not trained in computer marketing."

Kevin Davis

SOMETHING GOOD: "What's exciting is taking a really stodgy industry (like law) and being incredibly disruptive in it. Being disruptive is really exciting to me."