How Sheela Murthy embraced the internet in 1994 to build the most visited law firm website in the world, and what the same play looks like today with AI

The lawyer who only called to raise his fees

Sheela Murthy was born in 1961 in Baroda, India. Her father was an officer in the Indian army and the family did not have much money. He did not want her to study law. She studied it anyway.

She finished law school in Bangalore in 1985 at the top of a class of about 1,500. She won the all India moot court championship. Then she got into Harvard Law School for a master's degree. To cover her living costs there, she worked nights as a security guard.

After Harvard she joined White & Case, a big New York firm, doing corporate and real estate law. She found the work emotionally draining. In 1989 she moved to Baltimore with her husband, Vasant Nayak.

All this time she was an immigrant herself. Her own journey to US citizenship took 12 years. Some nights she woke up in a cold sweat, worried about her future.

She hired an immigration lawyer. He barely cared. "I was struck by my attorney's lack of sensitivity and how little he cared," she told The New York Times. "He only called when he wanted to tell me he was raising his fees."

That experience is the whole business. She knew exactly how it felt to be on the other side: scared, confused, paying, and ignored.

The dining room table, 1994

She learned immigration law while going through her own green card. In 1992 she started building an immigration practice inside a Baltimore firm.

In May 1994 she went out on her own. The Law Office of Sheela Murthy started at her dining room table. One lawyer, on her own, with no big firm name behind her.

She had the knowledge. What she did not have was a way for people to find her and trust her.

"If I didn't love this man, I'd think he wants to bankrupt me"

Her husband was a photographer and digital artist. He was excited about something most people had barely heard of: the World Wide Web.

His idea was simple. Put detailed immigration information on the web. All of it. For free.

She was skeptical. Her thought at the time: "If I didn't love this man, I'd think he wants to bankrupt me." Why would anyone pay a lawyer for answers they could read for free?

His answer: information should be free, and it would never replace a lawyer's advice on a real case. "Giving people information will never get in the way of that."

He built the site himself. It went live in the fall of 1994. A law firm website was considered weird back then. A law firm website that gave away the law was weirder still.

What she gave away

She did not put up a brochure. She put up the work.

Answers. She answered hundreds of questions from immigrants online, for free. Real questions about real situations, from people who could not get a straight answer anywhere else.

A weekly newsletter. She started the Murthy Bulletin, a weekly email newsletter on immigration news and changes. Almost no lawyer was writing one at the time. It grew a large audience around the world.

A place for people to help each other. She set up a moderated message board where immigrants shared their experiences and answered each other's questions. It grew to hundreds of thousands of people.

More over time. As the web grew, so did the free help: a regular chat, teleconferences where senior attorneys explained the law, podcasts and blogs.

No ads. With that much traffic, advertisers wanted in. She could have made about $5,000 a month with no effort. She said no. "We don't want clients wasting time looking at a bunch of ads before they get the information they need."

How free answers became paying clients

Immigration law is complicated and the stakes are huge. A wrong form can cost someone their job, their visa or years of waiting. People read the free answers and understood their situation. They also understood how much could go wrong.

So when they needed a lawyer, they already knew who to call. She had helped them for months before they paid her a cent. Every other lawyer was a stranger. She was the person who had already answered their question.

The firm grew with the site. It was not smooth. Around 1997, three of her four paralegals walked out. "It was like a bucket of water thrown at my face," she said. She had to learn to manage people, and her husband started coming into the office.

By 2013 the firm had 110 employees, including 27 attorneys, and brought in about $10 million a year. About 20 of those people worked in India. That February, murthy.com ranked number one on Alexa's traffic ranking of law firm websites.

In 2005 the practice became the Murthy Law Firm. Today it has its main office in Owings Mills, Maryland, an office in Seattle, and affiliate offices in Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai. Outside estimates put its revenue at $15 to $25 million a year. She was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009.

The rule we take from Murthy: the new thing will always look weird, and it often makes no sense at first. That is where the opportunity is. There is a short window for the people who embrace it early, while everyone else waits.

Whether you run a business or are about to start one, you are Murthy in 1994

The numbers