Lawyer Gwen Griggs is managing director of ADVOS Legal PLLC, focused on providing strategic legal counsel to high-growth privately held middle-market companies. Her path includes serving with large law firms and as corporate general counsel. Griggs also is the president of the Association for Corporate Growth and helped to create the Jacksonville Women’s Business Center and GrowJAX at the JAX Chamber.
ADVOS started 3½ years ago. The experience of working with one of North Florida’s entrepreneurial success stories – Health Designs – made the idea of applying business practices and key performance indicators to the delivery of legal services so clear and tangible. While the framework was coming together in my mind, I found myself in conversations with some local CEOs who wanted help managing transactions or thinking through how to grow their businesses.
It started with the premise of a law firm business model that leverages technology, measures results and gives the client control and transparency over the spend. We – it wouldn’t have happened without an incredible partner, Whitney Harper – built a phenomenal team of eight, and counting. The team uses agile methodology combined with tech we developed that measures efficiency and excellence in each project. It is designed to drive results, rather than hours. This model also allows us to leverage our experience as general counsel, where you really understand the business in a deep way – you understand what motivates it, what are the drivers, and use the tools that you learned practicing law to help achieve those goals. And, frankly, it was designed to create a way to work that I love and that other professionals would love as well.
We have a focus on high-growth scale-up and middle-market companies, helping them think through how to get to the next level. Our clients are passionate and intense about the work they’re doing. The firm is designed to serve these companies where job growth, revenue growth – significant impact – can happen. Being able to support them is very fulfilling.
I had a circuitous route to North Florida. I grew up in a military family and moved every year until we settled in Augusta, Georgia, when I was 7. When I was 11, I decided I was going to be a lawyer. Thinking I had to live in Washington, D.C., I started college there. One blizzard, and a summer in Ponte Vedra later, I knew that I couldn’t live my life in snow. I graduated from the University of North Florida and went to law school at the University of Florida. My first job as a lawyer was back in North Florida at Holland & Knight. It has been a great adventure and I’m glad I ended up in Florida.
My husband, Stuart, and I have been married 25 years and have three boys, only one that is still smaller than me. Our getaway is Sarasota. We are going to spend the better part of the summer – June, July – there. Fresh outlook, new perspectives. Because we are tech-enabled and well-integrated with our Macs and Zoom video-conferences, I know I won’t miss a beat.
With the convergence of technology, the global passion for entrepreneurship and the accessibility of how to grow a business, entrepreneurship is thriving. Working with passionate, creative, mission-driven leaders makes it inspiring to support them. They’re doing meaningful, impactful, dent-in-the-universe kind of work. It’s very rewarding for the entire team to know the important part we played in their success. Makes me love Mondays. And Fridays, too.