By: Lauren Stahl
Do you ever wonder how you will manage it all? It all might look different for each of us. Studying law. Teaching law. Practicing law. Having a family. Living a healthy life. Engaging in activities that fulfill you. Keeping your sanity. Just add being an entrepreneur to the mix.
Juggling all of the responsibilities that life brings can be stressful. But at the same time, juggling is simply a part of life. A daunting task, sure. But one that Professor Anderson manages to do as an entrepreneur, law professor, and family man.
A Traditional Path
Professor Anderson was a 2000 graduate of the New York School of Law. After graduation, Professor Anderson took a stroll down “traditional” law student lane and was associated with Sullivan & Cromwell LLP until 2003. His practice focused on mergers and acquisitions and financial institutions regulation, which is not exactly where he saw himself. Professor Anderson went on to receive his PhD in Political Science at Stanford University in 2008. Since then, his thirst for knowledge and innovation has continued as a Professor of Law at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law, researcher, and entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurship as a Side Hustle
Professor by day and entrepreneur by night. Well, not exactly. Professor Anderson does not have a set schedule for creativity. Professorship is not your typical 9-5 job that only leaves time for entrepreneurial endeavors in the evening hours. Flexibility is key because there is no telling when an entrepreneur will have an innovative idea.
Academia creates the flexibility Professor Anderson needs as an entrepreneur and family man. There are days when he works 24 hours a day and days where he does not work at all. There are days where he is grading exams or preparing for class. And there are days when he is focused on ScholarSift—analyzing data, engaging in customer service, or connecting with clientele. There are also days where he has the flexibility to attend a mid-morning school meeting for his children. Creating, teaching, and family. All important. All his worlds. And he knows, most importantly, how to prioritize in the face of life’s demands.
You Sift, We Sift – ScholarSift
Legal technology is his arena. Alongside business partner, Trent Wenzel, Professor Anderson co-founded an analytics technology for transactional drafting. They sold this technological tool—now known as Draft Analyzer—to Bloomberg Law. This tool is now a prominent analytics feature of Bloomberg Law. But they did not stop there.
The duo continued to explore and create technological tools that address the needs of the legal field. Their current endeavor, ScholarSift, is designed for law students, professors and scholars. Though the customer base may be small, Professor Anderson created ScholarSift to solve problems specifically in the realm of legal research.
For authors, ScholarSift provides an analysis of a draft with strengths and weaknesses, automatic search for the most on-point literature, and automated citation formatting. For law reviews, ScholarSift automatically sorts through hundreds of thousands of papers to find the most promising submissions, instantly identifies possible preemption, and automates citation formatting. What more could we want?
Professor Anderson explained why he created this platform. He noted that there are legal information systems designed for lawyers with paying clients. There are technology solutions designed around learning (e.g., studying for the bar exam). But there is not much designed for legal research. This is where ScholarSift steps in to assist authors (such as professors, legal scholars, and law students writing seminar papers) and law reviews, among others.
separate but Equal Worlds
Professor Anderson is not one to impose his entrepreneurial interests on his students. Even though his entrepreneurial work is an obvious source of interesting material for exam fact patterns, his worlds often remain separate.
He lives to create. Finding creative solutions to problems motivates him. He seizes every opportunity to learn new things. This even includes things like reforesting. Professor Anderson is currently reforesting his property in northern California after the Creek Fire destroyed his land. As we speak, he is waiting for the trees to grow. He even has a small timber business that sells Christmas trees. His entrepreneurial mind never sleeps. While his worlds often remain separate, his passion for creating connects them all.
success: Having a Choice
As an entrepreneur, Professor Anderson makes sacrifices. His mind often drifts into entrepreneurial mode, which can be hard to turn off. At the same time, he feels privileged to have the flexibility in his schedule to pursue his interests. All of them. The work he engages in is not forced upon him; he chooses his work. He can spend his time creating and focusing on projects that are rewarding to him and that is what he appreciates most.
Observe First, Create Second
Professor Anderson provided a piece of advice to budding entrepreneurs that I was not expecting. His advice stems from his personal experience with entrepreneurship. He encourages students to pursue traditional paths after law school, or at least not to fear a legal career. He spoke about how the practice of law is extremely inefficient. He believes there is an extreme gap in access to justice that technology has the potential to solve.
Thus, Professor Anderson believes that there are huge opportunities to create businesses around the law. He encourages students to take those traditional jobs where they will have the opportunity to observe what lawyers do and the problems that lawyers face. This observation may lead to a host of innovative entrepreneurial ideas. Those ideas may be related to law or adjacent to law but students will only see these problems by first being lawyers. Be observant, intentional, and take time to step back and survey the efficiency (or lack thereof) in the legal field. You never know what you might come up with.
Social Media
Professor Anderson’s Twitter: @ProfRobAnderson
ScholarSift’s Twitter: @ScholarSift
Lauren Stahl, at the time of this post, is a rising 2L at Penn State Dickinson Law. Formerly a medical researcher at the National Institutes of Health and Penn State College of Medicine, Lauren has interests in health care law and business transactional law. Lauren currently serves as Secretary of the Health Law Society, Philanthropy Chair of the Women’s Law Caucus, and a Research Assistant for Professor Prince.