NATIONAL RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION'S
FORK in the Road Magazine
Fall 2001
LATTES AND LEGAL ADVICE --by Beth Panitz
The Legal Grind® coffeehouse in Santa Monica, California, serves justice along with a cup of joe. Similar to the title character of the TV series “Ed”—who operates a law practice in a bowling alley—35-year old lawyer Jeffrey J. Hughes doles out legal advice in a café setting. Hughes and a network of lawyers offer what he refers to as “coffee and counsel®.” For $25, customers get a 10-to-15-minute consultation and all the java they can drink.
Hughes’ Legal grind helps the community by providing affordable legal advice. “We serve people who don’t have a lot of discretionary income to spend on lawyers,” he says. “We’ve created an environment that makes people feel comfortable asking any [legal] question. There’s no such thing as a stupid question. It’s great to have a place where people can come for advice.”
The coffeehouse features legal specialties of the day. For example, Wednesday’s specials include family law and real-estate law; Saturdays feature estate planning, small-business advising and medical-malpractice advice. Legal specialists in the respective areas provide the consultations on a voluntary basis.
The Legal Grind also features a self-help legal library. Over a cup of coffee and a pastry, customers can peruse law books in search of answers to their legal problems.
A 1992 graduate of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, Hughes founded the Legal Grind in 1996 as a way of combining his interest in restaurants and law. “”Since I was a kid, I’ve been working in the restaurant industry,” he says. “I got a work permit when I was in junior high school. I was busing tables at age 12 at Coach’s Corner restaurant in Cost Mesa, California.”
Throughout high school and college at the University of California at Los Angeles, Hughes worked as a waiter at several local restaurants as well as a shift manager at Orange Julius on Balboa Peninsula, California. “I was kind of scheming all the time [about running my own restaurant someday]. I was even drawing logos.” Eventually, Hughes also developed an interest in law. But after graduating from law school, Hughes says that he realized that “I didn’t want to bill myself out as a traditional lawyer. . . . I thought, ‘Why don’t I just combine my interests [in restaurants and law].’” Thus, Legal Grind was born.
Hughes’ assistant, Maria Murphy, agrees that the Legal Grind fills an important community need, while providing a rewarding career. “People can bring their legal questions to a casual, [non-threatening] atmosphere,” says the 25-year-old Murphy, a 2000 law-school graduate of the State University of New York in Buffalo. She spends her days serving up espressos and lattes – and legal assistance. Murphy prepares legal documents and fields phone requests for legal advice, referring callers to the appropriate legal specialist for a consultation. She also makes a mean latte. “I pride myself on making good foam,” says Murphy. “I had no idea that I could work in a coffee shop and be a lawyer. I’m using my law degree in a casual, freewheeling atmosphere.”
As for Hughes, he’s opening a second Legal Grind in Inglewood, California, this year and plans to take his legal-coffeehouse concept nationwide. He proudly notes that “all my life experiences and education added up to allow me to do this.”
