Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………………………….1
Executive Summary……………………………………………………………………………………………2
Problems to Be Addressed…………………………………………………………………………………2
The Proposed Solution……………………………………………………………………………………….4
How It Will Work…………………………………………………………………………………………………9
Proof of Concept………………………………………………………………………………………………..10
Market Testing…………………………………………………………………………………………………..11
Technology Plan…………………………………………………………………………………………………12
Financials……………………………………………………………………………………………………………13
Process Improvement……………………………………………………………………………………….14
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………….16
Executive Summary
A higher number of mothers are entering the workforce than ever before. According the U.S. Department of Labor, 71.5% of mothers in the United States are working. However, there has been very little advancement made in society to help mothers maintain their working status. As a result, many mothers are forced into choosing lower paying jobs, part-time work, or leaving the workforce to care for young children, causing loss of earnings, gender pay gaps, and loss of valuable workers in the market. My struggles as an expectant mother in law school has given me greater awareness of the problems that career mothers need addressed.
A mother should never have to choose between her career or her baby. This service will help pregnant mothers, who are given disparate treatment in their professions, to obtain access to legal aid and resources in order to empower them to make changes in the community. The service will function as an online DIY service with legal coaching, giving mothers the control, privacy, and flexibility, they need. With just a few employees working from home using their own equipment, the costs of starting the business will be minimal, making it very profitable. Finally, the company will utilize a mix of several process improvement approaches to provide a necessary service to this important market and build a long-lasting business model.
Problems to Be Addressed
Defining the Persona
When I found out I was expecting my second child, there were mixed feelings of excitement and anxiety. I was a young mother of a fourteen-month-old struggling to get through law school. Because I had my first child while in school, I knew how difficult it would be to go through the process with another pregnancy. I was very familiar with the inquisitive looks at my growing belly, the feeling of isolation from being unable to share my experiences with my colleagues, and the extra pressures from the added responsibility of parenthood. Particularly, I was keenly aware of the lack of support and accommodations from the school and was dreading to face the associate dean and hear those words, “You’re pregnant again?”
Pregnant mothers are especially vulnerable to abuse by employers, lost opportunities, extra stresses or pressures as compared to their peers, and general feelings of isolation. Pregnancy is an incredibly sensitive circumstance which requires special care, attention, and delicacy. This service is intended to target pregnant mothers when they are in most need of emotional support. While these depictions are certainly subject to my inherent biases and assumptions, accurate data collection and process improvements will help combat these biases.
Pains to be Relieved
The negative effects expectant mothers experience can be divided into two main categories: emotional pains and monetary losses. On the emotional side, many mothers experience frustration from lack of support, fear of discrimination or judgement, and extra pressure to perform at the same level as their non-pregnant peers. Other common feelings involve shame from being a burden on the workplace and anxiety about planning child care and work-life balance.
Monetary losses represent the more tangible pains that expectant mothers may experience. This includes pay cuts either from going part-time or pursuing a less demanding workload. Mothers also lose accessibility to higher paying jobs which maintain rigid work requirements that fail to account for the pregnant mothers’ need for flexibility. Others face discriminatory hiring and firing practices from employers who do not want to be burdened with providing maternity leave and other child care accommodations. Similar discrimination occurs in promotion decisions and advancement opportunities through seminars, leadership positions and furthering education.
Desired Gains
Emotional health is incredibly important to both the mother and her developing child during the pregnancy. Consequently, mothers place great value on feeling supported and assured. This can involve something as simple as an understanding boss or could be more extensive, such as a strong support group. Having a sustainable plan of action for work after birth is beneficial to a mother so that she can focus on her responsibilities and preparing for the new family member. Mothers who believe they are being treated unfairly also value having knowledge of their rights and access to resources to hold violators accountable.
There are also many tangible gains expectant mothers desire. For example, expectant mothers desire better accommodations at their school and workplace such as accessible parking, more frequent breaks during the work day, flexibility for doctor’s visits, adequate compensation during maternity leave and convenient access to child care. Babies bring extra financial costs so having affordable access to justice and resources to financial aid is also important to mothers. Most of all, pregnant mothers would like the option to continue in their careers and have children without having to take a pay cut or suffer other negative ramifications.
The Proposed Solution
This service aspires to give mothers the necessary tools to empower them in the workforce and combat the specific legal injustices they face by providing a self-help website with legal resources. Due to the delicate nature of pregnancy this service will consist of features that provide mothers with privacy, flexibility and anonymity. The service will be a non-profit organization and will function mainly from home offices using the employees’ own equipment.
Service Description
There are three main components to the service: a website providing legal resources, on-call attorneys for legal advice, and a legal research team. The website will function as a guided do-it-yourself service, making the expectant mother the central focus. There will be links to caselaw, articles and other resources. Clients will also have access to question and answer forums and online chatrooms should they need further aid. Finally, there will be an online blog on which mothers can share success stories, advice and encouragement with each other.
Because these mothers face a vast array of unique circumstances, personalized care is necessary for the mothers’ needs to be addressed. This need will be addressed through a visual orientation software similar to Pinterest on which mothers can search for resources that address their needs and create a portfolio by “pinning” them onto a board. These resources will be mainly legal sources and advice but will also constitute non-legal sources such as links to governmental financial aid, childcare grants for student-mothers, food banks and health clinics for low income families, counseling service hotlines and so forth. By providing both legal and non-legal resources, mothers can create a portfolio that gives a more wholistic picture of the mothers’ situation.
Most of the attorneys’ work will be performed behind the scenes through the website. Using the portfolios created by the clients, the attorneys can guide the client through the process by providing additional resources related to their searches, giving advice on next steps, and performing online document reviews for clients who want to file a legal claim in court. Should the mothers require additional help, the attorneys can answer questions in online-chat rooms or through phone calls. If the client wishes to pursue a case with the help of an attorney, she may do so on a contingency fee basis. However, hiring an attorney is not necessary as the mothers will have access to all the resources and legal coaching necessary to achieve their goals.
The final piece to the service is the research team whose main role is to collect data about the various problems expectant mothers face and assess where the law needs to be developed. Assuming there are no ethical violations, the research attorneys will gather data from the mothers’ portfolios, chatrooms, online blogsite, and surveys to determine what are the various legal concerns these mothers face. This information will then be used to determine whether the law addresses the clients concerns. Where the law is deficient, the attorneys will look to other jurisdictions to see these issues are addressed. These findings will be published in monthly articles and will include suggestions for legislatures for issues that have no legal remedy. The compiled data and studies will then be forwarded to lobbyists and interest groups working on generating changes in the law.
Pains Relieved
The service will ease the mothers’ feelings of frustration, fear, pressure by providing resources and legal guidance to address their problems. Moreover, mothers can avoid having to approach a superior in person during business hours when the situation may be potentially embarrassing by having 24/7 access to resources while maintaining privacy and anonymity. Consequently, mothers will no longer have to feel lost. hopeless, unsupported or inadequate.
As for the monetary concerns, this service will help ease the financial losses mothers experience by giving mothers other options instead of being forced into lower paying jobs. Schools and workplaces will no longer be able to take advantage of mothers who lack knowledge of their rights because they will have access to legal help. Mothers can also file claims for discrimination or failure to implement required accommodations as a means of enforcing better practices or to obtain compensation for wrongs committed against them. All these services will be available to mothers at their convenience, freeing them from the stress of finding an attorney, having to meet at an office during business hours and paying large fees.
Gains Achieved
By placing mothers at center of the service and giving her control over her own course of action, mothers will gain a sense of empowerment. The service will also address the mothers need for assurance and support through legal counseling. The online mom blog will give mothers a sense of community and defeat feelings of isolation. Finally, the service will give mothers anonymity by allowing them to access resources and ask questions without having to identify themselves in case they feel embarrassed or afraid of repercussions.
The mothers’ physical needs will also be addressed through the free resources online, which can be accessed anytime at the mom’s convenience. These services will be tailored to the mothers’ specific needs and will provide resources that also address the mothers’ non-legal concerns. Mothers will also have access to free legal advice with flexible hours through phone calls, online chat rooms and questions and answer forums.
Through these resources, mothers will see their desires for better accommodations realized either from enforcement proceeding or legal development. The studies and data collection from the research team will be used in lobbying for laws that will give mothers better maternity leave plans, physical accommodations at work and school, more federal grants for student-mothers, and stricter enforcement of antidiscrimination policies.
Business Plan
Privacy, flexibility, and convenience makes this service desirable for the busy working mother. Additionally, by using familiar technology such as blog and Pinterest inspired interfaces mothers can access the services they need with ease. The simple start-up of this service makes it very feasible. With just a handful of creative attorneys using their own equipment, this online company can be set up in a home office and start serving clients almost immediately. Because this a non-profit organization, much of the additional work will be done on a volunteer basis. Therefore, the main costs will be the development and maintenance of the web platform marketing, and payment of a few permanent employees.
With the simple start-up and the few outlined costs, the projection is that the company will be viable. Even accounting for changes in technology costs and pay rates, with proper planning and budgeting, these variables can be managed through the various donations, federal grants, and tax breaks. Aggressive marketing and continuous improvement will be used to ensure enough clients are being served to keep the company open.
There is also little concern with the client demand outpacing the company’s resources and budget because most of the services will be on a DIY software that can serve hundreds of clients at once. In the event that an increasing number of clients require the help of an attorney, the company will utilize its intake process and start referring additional clients to outside attorneys. Data collection and continuous improvement plans will also be used to assess whether the company is ready to expand, downsize, or take a different approach as to how the clients’ needs are being met.
How it Will Work
Intake Process
It is important to keep in mind that this company is not a law firm but an online service that provides informational products, DIY technology and legal coaching. The intake will have minimal steps and the flow will be dictated by the client. This will require flexibility as some clients may not need to go through all the steps in the process.
Below is a proposed intake process from the clients’ perspective:
Who Does What?
The service will start with five attorneys working part-time. Three attorneys will be working as staff attorneys. Their duties will include: updating the online resources, providing additional information based on searches, communicating with the clients, answering questions, and conducting the vetting process. These attorneys will work on rotations between 8am-8pm Monday through Friday at 16-20 hours a week. As the company grows, the attorneys will be transitioned into full-time hours. If the attorneys have hours to spare, they can take client cases on a contingency fee, otherwise the cases will be outsourced.
The other two attorneys will form the research staff. Their duties will entail: performing legal research, collecting data on the types of problems the clients face, compiling the data for studies, drafting monthly report articles, forwarding data and research compilations to lobbyists, and following up on whether these studies were used for legislative changes. These attorneys will be working between 12-15 hours a week and can pick up hours as needed, either to help the staff attorneys or conduct more research.
The company will also hire a web development firm to design and maintain the website. Additionally, one of the staff attorneys will be the head attorney and will oversee finances, corporate governance, strategy, and continuous improvement. Eventually, the company will hire an office manager to take over these duties when the budget allows.
Proof of Concept
With this idea in mind, the company will launch an experimental phase to test interest and feasibility. This will involve four phases: market research, development of a proof of concept website, analysis, and verification. In the research phase, the company will conduct a thorough Voice of the Customer through interviews and surveys to create a value proposition canvas detailing client wants and services offered by the company. Researchers will also get expert opinion from counsellors of pregnancy crisis centers or attorneys experienced in the field. Finally, this step will be used to identify and validate hypotheses.
In the next phase, the company will design an experiment with a simple test card. Starting with a hypothesis, this method will track what to test, how to measure results, and determine if the criteria is met. It will look something like this: “We believe that women are looking for ways to help them succeed in the work field. To verify, we will launch a proof of concept design of the online service and measure how many participants use the website. We will determine a statistical significance if at least 10% of the target audience to accesses the site.”
Testing will be done using a mix of prototype techniques. One method will be the unique link tracking in which a link to information describing the service will be pitched to a customer. Interest will be gauged by tracking whether the link was used or not. The company will also use Ad tracking to test customer interest by click rate using Google AdWords. Finally, the company will use minimum viable products such as data sheets, brochures, and YouTube videos to pitch the idea to potential customers.
During the analysis phase, the company will track learning, insights, and progress to be used in the verification phase. At this phase, the company will decide if there is a product-market fit, or if it needs to start over with some changes. Once there has been market validation, the company will design and create a business model and test it out using a 3-year projection. If this proves viable, the company will move into customer creation and finally, company building.
Market Testing
How the Service Will Be Marketed
Advertisements will be placed on the internet using Google ads, through social media outlets, newspapers and pregnancy catalogues. The company will also create pamphlets to distribute at pregnancy crises centers, churches, doctors’ offices, local government offices – such as town halls and county health centers, and secondary schools. There will also be promotional speakers at work seminars and colleges to target career mothers. These promotions will also be used to obtain interns to volunteer. Heavy emphasis will also be placed on promoting the service by word of mouth through family and friends.
Measuring Marketing Results
At the initial sign-up, there will be a simple questionnaire asking how the client heard about the company. Using Google analytics and social media analytics will allow us to gauge the effectiveness of online advertisements. There will also be follow up with the various marketing sources to determine how many clients responded to the advertisements. The research team will compile the information into data sheets. The raw data will then be transferred into graphs will measure which advertisements produced the most clients and which have the highest and lowest costs.
Technology Plan
Equipment for the Company
For the online service, the company will hire a web design firm to develop the platform including chat rooms, blogs, document review and a Pinterest type interface. Copyrights for the company name and IP addresses will need to be obtained. The research team will need a legal research engine such as Westlaw. Finally, the company will need a Microsoft Office suite including Publisher and Quicken to manage accounting.
Equipment for the Employees
The employees will be in charge of providing and maintaining their own equipment, but there will be a reserve set aside to aid in replacement and repair costs if needed. The employees will need basic office software such as Word, Excel, and Adobe Acrobat. They will also need laptops or equally functioning computers, cell-phones, and access to printers. Additionally, the employees will require good Wi-Fi reception, a business email account, and anti-virus protections. Finally, the employees should have some form of a document sharing platform.
Financials
Below is the estimated cost breakdown:
| Product | Cost | Per Month | Annual |
| Start-Up | |||
| Web Design | $20,000 | – | |
| MI Non-profit Filling Fee | $20 | – | – |
| MI 501(c)(3) Tax Break | $400 | – | – |
| Equipment Repair/Replace | $3,000 | – | – |
| Maintenance | |||
| Westlaw | – | $200 | $2,400 |
| Practice Management Software | – | $60 | $720 |
| Web Maintenance | – | $1,000 | $12,000 |
| 3 Staff Attorneys at 20hr/week
|
($22 per hr) | $5,280 | $63,360 |
| 2 Research Attorneys at 15hr/week
|
($22 per hr) | $2,640 | $31,680 |
| Total | $23,420 | $9,180 | $110,160 |
Based on the above chart, the company would have about 23,420 in start-up costs and roughly $110,160 annual costs. Based on research, the estimated cost for marketing should be about 7-8% of the company’s revenue. Including this estimation and some cushion room, the company’s annual budget would be between $135,000-$140,000. These numbers will be used when looking for investors. Funding will be obtained from private donations, investors, federal and state grants, and corporation scholarships.
With proper budgeting, good marketing strategies, and aggressive fundraising, the cost of operation should be sustainable. Because the employees will start on a part-time pay rate, they may need to pick up a second job to pay for living costs and student loans. Therefore, the hours must be flexible enough to accommodate this need.
Process Improvement
Refining the Product-Market Fit
Because there is little information on the specific problems that pregnant mothers face in the work place, the company will need to create a solid client profile detailing in concrete descriptions the jobs the mothers want done, their pains, and gains. These will be ranked based on priority. Once the client profile has been created, the company will outline a value proposition map to see how the services add value to the client.
Not all the pains and gains will be addressed especially because many of them are emotional or specific to unique circumstances. The goal is to address the areas that have most significance to the client and target the largest audience. The value proposition map will be reassessed on a weekly basis. Special attention will be given to how well the services address the clients’ pains and gains and whether they align with how customers measure success.
Improving the Business Model
Measuring the company’s business viability will be done using a mix of data, metrics, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Data will be collected for the following areas: number of new cases, types of cases, employees’ hours and activity, employee costs, case resolution, number of interested investors and client satisfaction. This data will be compiled and divided into charts, summaries, and displayed within a dashboard detailing information on a weekly, monthly, and annual rate. With this data, the company will draw a list of KPIs based on the most important factors needed to maintain the business.
Below is an example of a potential KPI chart for the company:
| Type | Rate of Measurement | Goals |
| Market Reach | Week, month, year | Reach <50% of target population; retain at least 20% as new clients |
| Case Resolution | Month, year | Resolve 90% of cases within 6-8 months |
| Legal Research | Month, year | Publish 1 article a month; submit 4-5 studies to lobbyists a year |
| Hours Spent | Week, month | 80% hours spent serving clients, >5% hours spent in overtime |
| Client Satisfaction | Month, year | 100% client satisfaction |
| Investors | Week, month, year | Have conversation with one potential donor a week; obtain 2-3 new donors a month; at least 60% new donors the first 3 years |
The above chart outlines some of the company’s most important KPIs and gives an example of goals that need to be reached in order for the company to be sustainable. Once the company is fully functional, these goals will be reassessed on a bi-weekly and monthly basis for continual process improvement. The staff will address whether the KPIs are being met, whether the goals are set too high or too low for sustainability, and will consider the overall quality and efficiency of the service.
Conclusion
In order to get this service started, the first step will be following a detailed market analysis is to use this data to attract donors. Once enough donations have been made to start up the business, the next step will be to hire staff and develop the proof of concept. During this time, the staff will come up with a good marketing strategy to reach as many members of the target audience as possible. The final step will be to test and validate the proof of concept, make the necessary changes, and evolve the service according to the needs of the clients.
As the company grows, services will be expanded to reach vulnerable pregnant mothers in all stages of life. Eventually there will be a legal clinic with a full-time staff working to help young pregnant teens, victims of rape and domestic violence, and pregnant mothers who may need other legal help and protection. This clinic will aspire to also serve these mothers’ material and emotional needs by connecting them with counsellors, food banks, shelters, and medical care professionals. Finally, the clinic will continue to function as a non-profit organization to ensure mothers have affordable access to these services.