Basha Rubin - CEO & Co-Founder, Priori

As the CEO and Co-Founder of Priori, Basha Rubin saw a white space for a legal marketplace while still in law school. Seizing the opportunity, diving in head first, and finding the right synergy with her co-founder meant choosing to forgo practicing law and committing to being a recruitment conduit for businesses and legal teams. Read on to hear about finding the right people to work with and how Basha is integrating artificial intelligence into the future of Priori.

Basha, let's start from the beginning. What led you to law school? 

As an undergraduate, my primary interests were in American politics and human rights. I’ve also always loved a good argument. My mentors encouraged me to apply to law school, and I’m so glad I listened. I wound up going straight from undergrad at Yale to law school at Yale, which were my favorite three years of my education. 

Many use their juris doctorate to pursue work outside of the legal profession, but most people don't make a change until after practicing for several years. In your case, you started your business soon after graduating. Was this intentional? Or did the entrepreneur bug bite unexpectedly?

When I started working on the initial idea for Priori, I always imagined I would return to the practice of law eventually. But—the idea of a transparent marketplace for legal felt too compelling not to pursue. So, after passing the bar, I began working on the initial idea for the business. Of course, history tells another story—and that initial germ of an idea has set me on a journey spanning more than a decade.

You founded Priori Legal in 2013. Tell us about Priori and how you came up with the idea behind the business.

The company that my co-founder and Yale Law School classmate, Mirra Levitt, and I founded in 2013 is quite different from Priori as it exists now in 2024, except for the core idea, which is a technology-driven marketplace—like an Uber or Airbnb but for legal services. 

The original idea was a marketplace for consumers. I had been working with various public defenders and noticed that most people didn’t know how to find a good lawyer, evaluate the quality of legal services or understand what a fair rate is. For example, I would talk to people scraping together every last cent of their family’s savings for a retainer for a defense attorney who might often provide inferior services compared to a public defender. For me, that was the initial problem we wanted to solve with Priori. 

Over time, the user base of the business evolved from individuals to small businesses and later to big corporations, where we ultimately found product-market fit. While the original business model focused on individuals and small businesses didn’t scale, we’re still very passionate about access to justice and love supporting other startups and non-profits in the ecosystem who are addressing those challenges.   

You also have a co-founder, whom you met in law school. How do you divide up your roles and responsibilities? And what advice do you have to other founders when they're looking for partners?

The strength of Mirra and my working relationship is one of the reasons that we persevered even during more challenging times. Despite coming from similar backgrounds, Mirra and I discovered early on that we enjoyed different aspects of the business—for me, sales and marketing and for her, product and technology. We collaborate closely on everything, of course, and share responsibility for company strategy and operations. 

For anyone who might be looking for a partner for their founder journey, my advice is to be open and honest with that person about your goals, both personally and professionally. That means having hard conversations—about what “success” looks like to you and about how much risk you can take financially. I’d also recommend partnering with someone whose professional-style you’ve had a chance to test-drive. Your co-founder is one of the most axiomatic relationships in your life, and picking the right person is crucial to success. 

In the past few years, entrepreneurship has often been glamourized, but there are plenty of trials and tribulations that entrepreneurs go through. Are there any stories of particularly difficult times and how you handled them?

We recently had Andy Dunn, founder of Bonobos, come to speak to the whole company at our annual kick-off, and he told everyone that founding a startup is like “eating glass” every day but also the best job you’ll ever have. That resonated with me—and across the company. 

There have been many difficult times at Priori—from searching for product-market fit in the early days (as I said earlier, we had the right product in the wrong market), to fundraising as two pregnant female founders, to navigating the rapidly changing macroeconomic environment over the past few years. My advice is mostly about people: co-founder, team, investors and mentors. With the right people on your side, you can find both the right solutions and the strength. 

AI and its impact on the legal industry has been a hot topic. How do you see AI integrating with Priori in the future (if it's not already)?

We recently announced that we integrated AI into our outside counsel decision-making platform, Scout. Scout is a tool for large corporate legal departments that was born out of our marketplace’s technology—clients who loved the experience of finding new attorneys wanted to be able to use that same functionality to learn more about the law firms they already do business with, as well. 

Scout is a platform that takes in a lot of data and structures it to make it actionable for law firm hiring decisions, and AI fits naturally into that process. It’s helping us make that data collection and organization process more seamless for both the legal departments who are using it to make decisions and their valued law firm partners. 

Currently, that’s the main way we’re integrating AI into our products, however, we’re also exploring several other use cases that we’ll be able to talk about soon!  

As Avocate is a mentorship organization, have there been any mentors that have played an integral role in your journey?

I’ve been so grateful for many mentors, formal and informal, over the years who have guided me on my entrepreneurial journey and have offered insight, advice and support at different stages. As a piece of advice, early on, I went to every event I could find in NYC geared toward legal, legaltech and early-stage startups and built relationships with other founders, investors and builders in the ecosystem. I’ve relied on many of those relationships over the years as we’ve navigated our growth.  

What advice do you have to anyone with a legal background looking to make the leap to entrepreneurship? 

I know many lawyers who are extraordinary entrepreneurs, whether in legaltech or not. One piece of advice that I think resonates with many lawyers who make the leap to entrepreneurship or other kinds of business is, “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Law school trains you toward a certain kind of thinking—for example, bluebooking (which I secretly loved), but that perfectionism often doesn’t serve in entrepreneurship where the goal is to move fast, test and iterate.