J&O Law, a boutique firm built for startups and fast-growing tech companies, has always put relationships first. Built by co-founders Rachel Johnson and Christina Oshan over a decade ago, the firm has grown into a 20-person team known for their sharp legal minds and down-to-earth approach. Whether they’re helping clients navigate commercial contracts, employment law, or IP protection, their goal is simple: be the kind of legal partner you’d actually want to call.
Rachel’s role extends from hiring and training new team members to providing legal expertise for clients to cultivating meaningful relationships within the venture and startup ecosystem. In short, she wears a lot of hats: lawyer, mentor, team builder, and, often, full-time emailer. “Some days, it feels like my entire job is email,” says Rachel. But with a client list that includes names like Cabinet and Anagram every message matters.
That’s where Front comes in. Even as a firm that’s naturally cautious about adopting new tools, the J&O team saw right away that Front introduced a more modern approach. “The J&O team is obsessed with Front,” says Rachel. “Lawyers tend to stick with tradition, but working with startups keeps us close to innovation. When we discovered Front, our whole team immediately saw how it could transform the way we practice law.”
Front was the missing piece we didn’t know we needed. It transformed our inbox, helping us scale in ways that might have taken another decade without it. After 10 years of building J&O, Front gave us the momentum to accelerate even further.
Challenges
Email was a silo, not a system
Before bringing Front into the fold, J&O was using Gmail, and, like many firms, it worked well enough. They weren’t actively looking for a new tool, and there was some hesitation about switching, especially when it came to something as foundational as email. However, their team works closely across various matters, and staying aligned is crucial. With traditional email, this often resulted in long email threads, excessive CCs, and unnecessary delays when multiple team members needed to collaborate on a response.
Too many threads, not enough clarity
From commercial contracts to privacy and corporate governance and larger tech clients, J&O’s team needs to stay flexible and jump in where needed. “We often describe ourselves as a Swiss Army Knife: companies come to us for outside general counsel, and needs can come from all directions,” says Rachel. “We frequently pull in team members across employment, IP, and corporate.”
Before Front, keeping track of all the moving pieces took more time than it should have. Messages would pile up, and it was easy to lose track of responses. Since the team bills by the hour, that lack of clarity directly impacted how efficiently they could support their clients.
Front has helped us streamline communication, which is especially valuable for a firm that bills by the hour. It saved us from the time sink of daily email management and made our work so much more efficient.
Solutions
How Front became J&O’s secret weapon
When the J&O team first heard about Front, they weren’t actively shopping for a new email solution. “But Front didn’t feel like something extra to manage,” says Rachel. “It actually took things off my plate and simplified how I work.”
With Front, it’s so much easier to share visibility into conversations. Team members can review drafts, provide edits, or just get context without jumping between inboxes or forwarding messages. “We work very closely within our teams, and one Front feature that’s been especially impactful is the ability to share drafts and collaborate in real time — whether for editing or getting a second set of eyes,” says Rachel. “This is incredibly helpful, especially as we train and onboard new employees in the J&O way.”
For us, Front is our holy grail where everything runs smoothly.
Effortless collaboration without the CC chaos
When a client reaches out to J&O, their attorney quickly loops in the relevant team members using Front. For example, if a client hires a C-suite executive and offers equity, the lead attorney can loop in other team members including partners, associates, and/or paralegals from the employment team, to draft the offer letter, and the corporate team to confirm the equity calculations and draft the proper corporate approvals. All communication and document drafts happen within the Front chain, allowing for seamless collaboration— all without having to leave Front. This allows the J&O team to work efficiently, without having to search prior email chains, drafts and team comments, and therefore brings cost savings to clients.
“Being able to loop everyone in without constantly CC’ing has been a perfect fit for our collaborative style,” says Rachel. “The whole workflow really magically happens in Front.”
Streamlining document management without compromising service
J&O is built on close collaboration. The team needs to work in sync across fast-moving client matters, and Front’s shared inboxes and conversation history make that possible. For example, clients send all signed documents to a shared inbox, which the team then saves and organizes in their internal records.
“This is crucial because our clients are often high-growth companies signing numerous documents quickly,” says Rachel. “While it’s not uncommon for corporate records to get messy, we take pride in keeping everything organized and properly saved.” This is part of how J&O delivers high-touch service while maintaining tight oversight of their clients’ legal infrastructure.
Ensuring quick, reliable client responses
At J&O Law, responsiveness is a foundational part of the firm’s identity. Having worked at larger, traditional law firms, the team knows the frustration that comes from a customer being left in the dark. “You’d email your attorney and hear nothing — no confirmation, no timeline, just silence,” says Rachel.
That experience led Rachel and Christina to build something different at J&O. The firm commits to acknowledging every client message. “We pride ourselves on responsiveness,” Rachel says. “At the very least, we let clients know, ‘We got this, and here’s when we’ll get back to you.’”
To maintain that standard across a fast-paced practice, J&O relies on Front. Features like reminders and snoozing help attorneys keep track of follow-ups and ensure nothing slips through the cracks. “We use Front to stay on top of things,” says Rachel. “It ensures we meet deadlines and always respond to clients in a timely way.” This not only keeps clients happy, it ensures the team is using their time (and their clients’ budget) wisely.
Turning a tangle of tools into a seamless system
Not only does Front serve as the foundation of J&O’s client communication, it also ties together their broader tech stack. Every client has a dedicated Asana project where emails and tasks are tracked. With the Front Asana integration, messages are automatically attached to the right project to support firm and client management. Document storage and sharing is also easily integrated into Front workflows thanks to Dropbox and Google Drive integrations.
As a fully remote firm, J&O uses Slack heavily but has found that the volume of Slack messages has dropped since internal sharing – like documents and drafts – happens directly in Front, reducing context switching. Slack serves as their “virtual office.”
Once we started using Front, Slack messages went down and we weren’t having to share Google Doc links as much. We’re able to share things directly in Front.
Results
Scaling service 10x without losing the human touch
Front transformed how J&O operates. What started as a two-person team is now a 20-person practice providing high-touch service to dozens of companies each month, and Front has played a major role in making that scale possible. “We’ve been incredibly happy with Front and recommend it to everyone, especially other law firms,” says Rachel. “Our job revolves around email — responding to clients, fielding questions, and managing client communications — and it’s hard to find a tool that works so seamlessly. But Front has truly become essential to our daily practice.”
By centralizing communication and making collaboration seamless, J&O has built a team that feels fully integrated, even when team members are working remotely, across different specialties, or jumping into fast-moving client matters.
Collaboration to provide proactive service
At J&O, it’s not unusual for a single client email to contain four separate legal questions, each needing input from a different attorney. Instead of passing it around or holding multiple meetings, everything happens inside Front.
“We aim to be proactive, not just reactive. Our role is to think ahead for our clients, not just fix problems as they arise,” says Rachel. “Many of our clients are fast-growing, venture-backed companies — adding team members, scaling quickly — and the last thing they need is legal slowing them down. We want to be the lawyers who keep things moving and help propel them forward.”
Supporting growth with confidence
As the firm continues to grow, Front helps ensure new hires can hit the ground running. With clear systems, collaborative workflows, and even a rich library of auto-response templates built from a decade of client service, onboarding is easier. “Whenever a new attorney is brought on, they’re a little confused at first,” says Rachel. “Then it’s quickly, ‘Oh my gosh, this is incredible!’”
Knowing the right tools are in place also gives leadership the confidence to keep expanding the team and taking on more clients, all while holding onto the things that make J&O feel personal.
“Front gives us the systems and structure to confidently onboard new hires and manage work across dozens of clients each month,” says Rachel. “It helps us stay on top of everything — fewer follow-ups, fewer dropped balls. It creates a culture where we have each other’s backs and deliver the kind of client experience we pride ourselves on at J&O.”
