In this LeverageCon interview, Toby Potter of Global Integrity Finance speaks with Jennifer Young, partner at Jurassi Law Firm, about the firm’s role in the private lending and real‑estate fund space. Jurassi positions itself as the nation’s largest private‑lender law firm, offering a full suite of services: corporate and securities work, fund formation and licensing, banking and finance documentation, and a litigation/bankruptcy practice. The conversation contrasts Jurassi’s attorney‑reviewed loan documents with the LightningDocs automated document‑generation platform, emphasizing Jurassi’s state‑by‑state compliance reviews, licensing alerts, and usury‑law safeguards. The firm highlights its proactive regulatory monitoring, lobbying efforts in Washington, and its commitment to keep clients compliant across all 50 states. Jennifer explains how Jurassi assists clients with multi‑state licensing, fund formation (including Reg D/506(c) offerings), and connects them to specialized service providers such as debt‑fund CPAs, servicers, and warehouse lenders. The interview also covers industry trends: the surge in in‑house servicing, the lingering effects of COVID‑19 on refinancing and servicing workloads, and the growing need for specialized compliance. Jurassi’s thought‑leadership channels—including the “Lender Lounge” podcast hosted by Kevin Kim and recent episodes featuring Jennifer and Nima—are mentioned as resources for industry professionals. The discussion ends with a call to action for listeners to engage with Jurassi via its website and conferences.
Chapters
Hey everybody, Toby Potter here, Global Integrity Finance. We are here today in Dallas, LeverageCon. Brad Al-Azawi put this on as he does always, an amazing show. Over 500 people registered. Hundreds of vendors, amazing turnout, and one of the most pronounced companies in the industry is Jurassi Law Firm. And today we have the distinct honor and privilege to meet with Jennifer Young. Jennifer Young with Jurassi. Now I hesitate on her name because Jennifer doesn't know me, and that's just— I guarantee you, when the people from Jurassi—
but it was fair, you didn't know me either.
Yeah, this is true, true, true. I have been out of the industry for 3 years. Okay, so So, uh, but we're back, but we're here to talk to Jennifer about Jurassi, all the things that's going on. You guys were the pioneer innovators of Lightning Docks. Love Lightning Docks, uh, love Kevin, love the team, um, have, have been a big fan of you guys for, uh, almost 10 years now. Yeah, so I'd love to hear that. Let's talk about Jurassi, talk about you.
All right, I don't know anything about you though.
No, no, we're talking about you.
No, no, no.
So I'll leave this deal. So, so tell me what's going on with Trust. You guys did Lightning Docks almost 5 years ago.
Yes.
Yeah.
And now it's really kicking off.
So tell me why it's just now really picking up. If people get more comfortable with it, more, you know, believe that it's valid.
The product, I think, has now kind of been in that stage where now we can go out and really help anybody, right? Cater and tailor as, as needed. But Dorasi is, you know, the big sister company.
Yeah.
I would say that we are the nation's largest leading private lender law firm.
Yep.
Lenders Council, we have a corporate securities team, which is me and Kevin.
Yeah.
We do fund formation and licensing as needed. Yep. And any corporate work. We have a banking and finance team. They do loan docs. They're the transactional team. They help with warehouse lines of credit as needed. Servicer agreements, book agreements.
On the LightningDocs, um, when that— when you go in and put in the LightningDocs, it creates and generates all your closing docs for you, correct?
All the documents, all 50 states, compliant in all 50 states. I think it will also raise compliance flags if, you know, it's a licensing state. Yeah, they'll say, hey, this is a state that you need to be licensed, reach out to—
violating the usury laws.
Uh, I don't know.
Does it trigger that?
I think it does, but I'm not sure.
Okay, so that's one of the things that I think that the industry is a little nervous about. Yeah, when you guys rolled out LightningDocs was traditionally we had an attorney that's creating those docs.
We still got Jurassi for that, right?
So does Jurassi look at them, or do we have to say, hey, can you take a look?
No. So the difference between LightningDocs and Jurassi—
yeah—
is that you have Jurassi attorneys reviewing every single term on your loan. Yeah, it's a— I don't know— Colorado loan, right? Uh, I'm These are my terms. Am I compliant? Am I under the user limit? Can I do prepayment penalty fees? Can I do charge late fees? I don't know, right? These attorneys review every single term and they will flag anything. LightningDocs, you have to know what you're doing. You have to have some sort of compliance, you know, information or research in-house on your back office. And the whatever you put in is going to be what is generated.
So it's just a plug and play.
Plug and play.
Yeah.
But it's an online platform. It is very, very easy to use, very user-friendly.
So you said that you think, I mean, you're seeing that it's really starting to take off.
It is.
You think because of the speed of implementation, the demand today, I think that's helping out.
Yeah. I think also the targeted marketing effort.
Yeah.
You know, Lightning Docs is getting out there. They're at all the conferences. They have booths set up now. You know, that hasn't happened in the past 3 years, I think. Probably 2 years.
Yeah, because you guys are really big with Apple, real big with Think, uh, really general counsel for Apple. Yeah, yeah. So you guys were always at those shows.
Yes.
But I don't know about, uh, LeverageCon, MPLA, all those.
Yeah, depends on where it is.
MPLA is a conflict.
Yes. Uh, I don't know about that.
Yeah, MPLA is a conflict for you guys. Um, And so I have no conflicts.
I don't know.
Yeah, you can ask Kevin or Nima or any of those guys. So tell me what else is going on with Jirassi. You know, as our industry continues to have transformation going on, what is Jirassi doing to always stay in front for us as lenders, as investors, and helping guide us through these troubled waters?
Yeah, I mean, the market is changing. Rules, compliance rules are changing. Regulatory actions are being, you know, put out every year, every quarter, I don't know. We're on top of all of that. We make sure that, you know, in all states that any loan docs you do through Jurassi is going to be compliant, up to date. Right. We just— we have to— we're lawyers and we care about our clients. We want you guys to do well. If you use us, we want to make sure that you are going to be compliant in all 50 states.
What is Jurassi's position on all these new laws trying to be passed? Where lobbyists are going in.
We will lobby.
Yeah, yeah, you guys are lobbying still for the private equity world, still funding that and trying to keep all the government out of our space a little bit.
Yeah, yeah, where appropriate.
Yeah. And then, and I think we've all feared that eventually the government will come in because our space is growing so much.
It is growing.
And they're, they're watching dollar bills not be put into their pocket, so There's going to be a day in time that comes where the government sticks their ugly head into our space.
Hopefully not.
And disrupt it all. But hopefully we've got companies like Girassi that's going to continue fighting that battle for us on the front.
Yeah. Where it matters, when we know that it's going to make a difference for our clients, we will step in and go to D.C. We were just in D.C., I think last week, 2 weeks ago.
Lobbying.
Lobbying.
What was the bill you were fighting then?
I don't remember.
Oh my gosh.
Cut that. That was Steve. So we have a litigation and bankruptcy department.
Yeah.
That's the third department for Jurassi.
Yep.
And he was, him and our Lightning Dogs, I think, was also there.
Right.
But so we're all up on it.
Yeah. What does, you know, on a day-to-day, what do you do at Jurassi?
So I'm a partner on the corporate and securities team. Everything that Kevin does, I do. We have a team that we manage and we take care of our clients for fund formation licensing.
So you're setting up their, their, uh, their 506(c)s. Yep. Reg Ds, all that stuff.
Yeah. Funds, real estate funds, syndications, and then licensing. Licensing is exploding by the way, because more and more people are expanding.
Yep.
Into other states. They're not just niche little state or, you know, local.
Mm-hmm.
They're going into multiple states and not just the states that don't need licensing. They are actually tackling that beast. Arizona. Yeah.
California.
Tackling that beast.
All that.
And then servicing, I think has, I've seen growing. Everybody's trying to bring servicing in-house.
You know what? Because we're all sick of the servicers.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, they've gotten so large and COVID again, I can sit here and you'll be the 14th person we've interviewed today. And I know that everyone we've talked to, COVID, we've shared a concern how COVID disrupted our space one level or another. This be one of them.
Yeah.
Because when COVID happened, all those refinances took place. Servicing became astronomical.
Yeah.
They got too big for their britches.
Yeah.
And now they really don't care. It's, it's just a day in, day out job.
Yeah. And I see my clients caring about their borrowers, right? Yes. They wanna provide the level of service that they feel is appropriate. Yes. And the other servicing companies, I think, is not up to par for what they want to provide.
And what, what the servicing companies don't understand is when you disrupt my client's ability to make their payments, they don't get mad at the servicing company, they get mad at me.
Yeah, that's right.
And I spent years building this relationship. Yes.
That's a good point.
And you destroy it because you didn't input an ACH form. Or, you know, you missed a digit on the routing number, whatever stupid excuse we run into every day. And we have to take time out of our day to calm our client down, say, no, there's not going to be any late charges. No, they're not calling your note due. Sorry that this happened.
Provide good service because that's what you do. These are your clients. You care about them. So some of them are bringing them in-house to where we can control it. Yes.
And that's so important.
That's right.
So you guys work on it. Yeah.
Yeah. There's a process there. And servicing is a whole licensing evaluation. That we need to do for all 50 states.
Yeah.
Regulatory compliance. Yeah.
So on the fund deal, do you guys— so once you set that fund up, do you help them raise capital or do you just guide through the contractual agreements?
We help them set everything up. And once that's done, it's not ever, you know, it's never the last time that we talk to them.
Right.
We help them, you know, connect with servicers like third-party vendors, right? Good CPA firms who know debt fund accounting. You can't just have a regular CPA firm do, you know, your debt fund accounting. Nuance there. I've had clients who don't use a, you know, CPA who knows up fund accounting, and it's a mess. It's not, it's not great, right?
It took us 2 years— not to interrupt— took us 2 years to get my accounting firm to understand what we do and how we do it.
Yeah, it's a little bit specialized.
Yeah, and I had to pay every month their bill while they educated and trained them.
So in, in our books, and we're there to help guide our clients. Once your fund is set up, you know, who do you need to connect with? Who's going to help you make your business more streamlined, help your fund run smoothly? That could be fund admin, could be CPAs, right? Um, LOS, you know, and we're there every step of the way. We, we, if they're looking for additional maybe leverage, talk to some banks or try to get them a different warehouse, warehouse lines, longer terms, who's a good fit for you, we will make that introduction and then continue to help them. We're there to advise. They always have investors have questions.
Yep.
You know, we're there to advise them through every single—
and that's what you and Kevin and your team does day in, day out.
Yeah.
Great. So how does somebody who's wanting to partner up with you guys find you guys?
Uh, we are at jirassiLLP.com. Uh, we are a law firm and we also have a conference line, so feel free to come to our conferences. You'll meet great people, connect with great, you know, industry leaders, uh, vendors, third-party servicers, and anybody that's going to be helpful for this line of business. We are a very specialized niche kind of industry, right? So meeting the right people, just Talking and connecting, who knows where that relationship is gonna go, but learning best practices, just having conversations, building a relationship, that's always gonna be helpful for anybody that's in this space.
Outstanding. One quick question, does Kevin still do his podcast?
Yes, he does.
What's it called again?
Uh, Lender Lounge with Kevin.
Lender Lounge. That's, yeah, yeah. Lender Lounge. Been doing that for a long time.
Yeah.
Yeah. And I'm telling you, a tremendous amount of insight, information, content, when he's talking to somebody, he's got an expert on there. Yeah, they're going over it. It is astronomical. Look him up, Kevin Kim.
Uh, very recently me and Nima took over.
Oh, you took over?
It was, uh, me and Nima and Kevin, and he thought that he was going to interview us. We flipped it around. It's going to be a very interesting episode.
When is that one going to be released?
I think in the next month or so.
That's awesome.
I love it.
I've known Kevin for years. Uh, I've known Nima for years. Love those guys to death. And we've worked with you guys throughout the last 10 years.
Yeah.
Glad to meet you.
Thank you.
Glad you now know me.
I do now know you.
And hey, everybody, if you like what you heard, look her up. Get a hold of them. They are one of the most profound attorneys in our space. They can do it all. I've dealt with them. I've worked with them. We love them. Like, share, subscribe. Get a hold of them. Talk to you soon. Appreciate it.
