Office workers who dream of being their own boss may fantasize about calling the shots, earning sky-high salaries, and setting their own schedules, but if they step into the shoes of a founder, they’ll escape that spell. Logan Brown, founder of the AI-powered Soxton law firm, says she now puts in more hours than she did in her salaried legal job.
“I don’t [work-life balance] In Dafa. I have more work than I do there,” she said wealth. “I come from a place where people work long hours and hard, and I work harder now than I ever did before.”
The 30-year-old has spent most of her life in the legal profession. The summer before seventh grade, she had landed an internship with her hometown district attorney’s office, and her career hasn’t slowed down since. After graduating as valedictorian of Vanderbilt University in 2018, she entered Harvard Law School and soon after took an associate position at the Silicon Valley law firm Cooley LLP.
But after just two years at the US-based international law firm, Brown decided it was time to do his own thing. Last June, she founded Soxton: a legal services firm that provides artificial intelligence support to startups.
Employees don’t work 72 hours a week like some “996” companies do. Now, she is focused on ensuring that all work within the company is mission-based and meaningful. She’s scrambling to take on new responsibilities as a founder, but the long hours are worth it.
“I care more now and my hours are more meaningful. But I don’t think this will last forever,” Brown continued. “We don’t put in hours for the sake of hours… We work really hard. I don’t have any balance, but I also find the work fun. I love it.”
Leaving a stable, full-time job to start a business in the Wild West can be daunting. For most professionals, changing jobs means putting their health insurance, work-life balance, and stable paycheck at risk. Brown is going through these growing pains, but he says the sacrifices to grow the business are well worth it.
“It’s absolutely terrifying to lose the security of a steady paycheck and be on your own,” Brown said. “I’m not making more money, but I do have ownership in what I’m doing… We can really help, be a small part of it [our customers’] The journey is interesting. This part is more satisfying. But yes, it’s going to be a pay cut for a period of time. “
Starting to create something completely new can be very intimidating – especially for someone who has spent their entire career working in an office. Harvard Business Review estimates that more than two-thirds of startups fail to generate positive returns for investors.
Fortunately, Brown had already tested the waters as a founder, launching workwear brand Spencer Jane while studying at Harvard University. Despite the familiarity, she said, the transition from a big law firm to Throxton was still not an easy one.
“Everything is unknown unless you do it a few times and figure it out, get your bearings…it’s definitely a challenge. But it’s fun – I’m having the time of my life,” she added.
Leaving a steady 9-to-5 job requires a leap of faith, but for Brown, the perfect storm of leaving an office job was brewing.
According to a 2025 Thomson Reuters study, about 80% of legal professionals said artificial intelligence will have a significant or transformative impact on their firms in the next five years. While working with Cooley’s technology startup clients, she is intimately familiar with the interactions between emerging Silicon Valley unicorns and the legal system. Plus, she has the technical chops to lead an artificial intelligence company: Brown started taking programming classes at a local community college in middle school, inspired by Mark Zuckerberg appearing on the cover. time‘s 2010 Person of the Year issue.
“The technology is very real, and there’s a lot of things that are unique and meaningful right now in my context,” Brown explains. “I don’t want to be a founder for the sake of being a founder. That’s a bad idea because it’s very hard work.”
In December, Soxton raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding led by Moxxie Ventures, with participation from Strobe, Coalition, Caterina Fake and Flex. The business has served over 300 companies and counting, with 1,500 startups on the waiting list, and that’s just the beginning. Brown predicts that within the next decade, advanced technology will revolutionize the tradition-bound legal industry.
“I describe the legal profession as being like the Yellow Pages or Blockbuster. The technology is transformative and there’s a lot of money invested in it,” said the Thoxton founder. “The legal profession and the way users consume legal services over the past decade [will be] Fundamentally different from now. “
This story originally appeared on Fortune.com
