Christian Beck skippered LawConnect to line honours glory at last year’s Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. Editor-in-chief Michelle Giglio spoke to Chrisian about riding his dragster around Collaroy Plateau as a child and how a radical idea in his 20s turned into billion-dollar legal software business LEAP
Christian Beck is the first to admit he’s no professional sailor. Sure, he can climb a mast, read the wind and unfurl sails, but Christian jokes his $1.6 million supermaxi LawConnect works so much better when he’s asleep. Yet in last year’s Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, LawConnect defied all the odds and crossed the line 51 seconds ahead of favourite Andoo Comanche – the second-closest finish in history – with the lead changing five times as the 100-foot supermaxis raced towards the finish on the River Derwent in Hobart.
It’s the stuff of racing legend, with LawConnect a bridesmaid in the last three races. What was going through Christian’s mind during those heart-stopping moments?
“I went from thinking, ‘oh this is great,’ to thinking, ‘oh, we’re going to come second again,” he laughs. “Most of the way up the Derwent I didn’t think we were going to win and no one did really. And I was a bit sad about that because we’d been fairly close at times and I thought (this year) we had a better chance.
“So when we got to the point where we were in front, I couldn’t believe it. Disbelief is probably my best way to describe it!”
The 55-year-old’s journey to first across the finish line took six years to execute. But as Christian has shown in his professional career, he is a very patient man who stays the course.
For when Christian is on shore, he is the founder and chief executive officer of LEAP Legal Software, a division of Australian Technology Innovators. It includes LEAP, e-conveyancing company InfoTrack and multiple other companies worth an estimated $1 billion. LEAP is used by a significant share of small- to-medium law firms in Australia, with sizeable inroads in the UK, New Zealand, Canada and the USA.
This really is a story about a man who believed that despite no formal training in programming or business, with hard work and great ideas he could succeed. So he has gone from being a ‘one- man band’ in his twenties, to now overseeing several companies with 2,700 employees across the world.
Christian raises the RSHYR cup
It all began after a few uninspiring jobs straight after school, including as a Comalco mechanical technician. But nothing really stuck. Christian’s father ran a small conveyancing law firm in Parramatta and had designed his own legal software for the practice. When the lady looking after the conveyancing system left, Beck Snr was ‘desperate’ to replace her. “So first he rang my brother, who was the smart one, and he didn’t want to do it. Then I think he had no choice but to give it to me!” Christian laughs.
Christian then spent a lot of time learning how to program a computer on his own, with just a few hours of formal tuition a week over three months. “Even if you go to university (to study programming), what you really learn from is sitting there trying things and making mistakes.”
It took about a year, but eventually Christian ‘got it’. “It was one of those things I think I loved because it’s very creative. It sounds boring, but what’s very good about a computer program is you can create very good solutions to problems. And I enjoyed that.”
Initially Christian tackled his dad’s own software and made it more reliable and easier to use. Despite the fact his father said he would never make money out of lawyers, he started selling the software to law firms, even driving around regional NSW to secure clients.
For around 12 years he worked on his own, refining the program, responding to feedback from lawyers about what worked and what didn’t.
At the time, there were other accounting programs for law firms, but what LEAP offered was an integrated system – combining practice management, document assembly and financials. “My dad was quite ahead of his time when he came up with the original idea,” Christian reflects.
“We found that the concept of the legal software was quite different to everyone else, who offered a more accounting orientation. Ours was more a productivity orientation – getting the work done (and we built in) InfoTrack where it integrated all the online information that lawyers need. And that formula was enough to somewhat conquer Australia and the UK.”
Once more programmers came on board, the entrepreneur stopped coding to focus on management – all learnt, once again, on the job. “I have this view that when you are working in a job like a startup or a business, your rate of learning is often higher than formal education. So it was really just all on the job learning and learning from mistakes,” Christian explains.
Fears about the ‘Y2K’ bug, which created hysteria in the years leading up to 1 January, 2000 that all computers would stop working, proved to be the turning point for LEAP as lawyers sought to secure their networks. “What I’d probably say prior to Y2K, anyone looking at (LEAP) would think it was a very bad business!” he laughs. “I think what Y2K did was turn it from very bad business into an okay business. But it then took about 17 years for LEAP to become valuable.
“I think a lot of it is I landed in the right place at the right time as legal software back in those days was in its very early stages.”
While Christian could never have predicted how well LEAP and InfoTrack would do when he started programming 35 years ago, he was very motivated to succeed after failing Year 1 at Mosman Preparatory School. In fact, he never excelled in his schooling, which included Pittwater House in Collaroy and high school in Bathurst.
“You have to work very hard to be successful and something has to drive you to do that. And I think that in my case it was things hadn’t gone well and I was trying to prove to the world I wasn’t really stupid.
“My initial objective was just to prove that I could do something useful!” he laughs. “But then I think that morphed into wanting to conquer Australia with legal software.”
Christian explains that his journey into innovation was actually because he did not succeed at school, so the usual higher education pathways were closed to him.
“I didn’t have a lot of other opportunities. And often I think the people that get opportunities don’t often do the alternate things because they normally do what’s more sensible and mainstream. But because I didn’t have those opportunities, I ended up doing something that at the time was very alternate. And it turned out to be very valuable.”
Essentially, if Christian has to define his life, he says he has two roles: CEO and ‘dad’ to five children – with sailing squashed somewhere in the mix. “What I mostly do is deal with kids and work. So, I try to mix things like sailing into it and that’s why I’m not really a very good sailor because I’m not doing the kind of things you need to do to be really good at it. I’m more of a dad than a sailor.”
Christian (right) with his brother and their first boat, a Manly junior
How did sailing come into his life in such a major way? Being a father while the business was growing actually has a lot to do with it, as it was an activity he could do with his children, just as he had experienced as a child growing up in Dee Why and Collaroy Plateau. Christian’s stepfather took him out a few times in a Manly junior boat and he did a catamaran course on Narrabeen Lakes. “I was a frustrated sailor as a kid because we had a little bit of it, but not much.” Life was more about riding his dragster down the plateau to the shops – with a hard ride uphill on the way back.
There was a little bit of sailing in his early 20s, but building his fledgling business took priority. It was only 10 years ago that he revived his love of sailing with twilight events, taking out clients and his children. A lot of it happens not far from his home in Riverview on the Lower North Shore.
“I like the machinery around it. I like being out there and the social side of it,” he reflects. “(Twilight) is my favourite style of sailing. It’s really good because the race goes for about an hour and then you have dinner and drinks.”
It could not be more different to the hustle and bustle of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, which Christian first started watching as a six-year-old with his stepfather. Looking for a challenge, Christian was inspired to enter the race and originally looked at buying a 50-foot boat, but he ended up with former winner Perpetual LOYAL for the same price. “I didn’t realise at the time how complicated it was to run and how big a deal that was. And the first year I was very hands on, did all the training and was really trying to get into it.”
These days Christian is a father of five: Cameron 20, Indy 17, Zane 15, Asher 11 and baby Hartley joining team Beck after second wife Rachel gave birth five months ago. So while the rest of the crew start gearing up for the Sydney Hobart in November, Christian gets on LawConnect when the race starts on Boxing Day, and gets off two days later.
It’s a far cry from the six days it used to take the 35-foot cutters when the Sydney Hobart started in 1945. It remains a race which is not for the faint-hearted, with sea conditions often treacherous, and six deaths marring the tragic 1998 race which was hit by an unexpected storm. Even in 2023, of the 84 boats which started, 71 finished.
Wife Rachel holding baby Hartley, Christian and son Indy last Christmas
“I’m not sure people do it because it’s actually fun to be there, but they do it because they want to win or because it’s a challenge,” Christian reflects. “And I think that’s certainly my case. I start off just wanting to be first out of the heads, and then transition to trying to win it.”
Unlike most owners, Christian sits on the rail and not the back of the boat and tries to stay out of the way of his professional sailing team. “I don’t trust myself not to distract them!” he laughs.
He is full of praise for his sailing masters Tony Mutter and Chris Nicolson, professionals who compete year-round in major competitions like The Ocean Race. “They’re the people that you really want,” Christian states. “It’s always easy when the weather’s easy, but (not) when the weather’s rough.
“A lot of (the race) is about risk management. It’s actually very hard work and it takes a lot of skill.”
Christian credits Tony’s ‘softly spoken’ but direct leadership style for the 2023 win. “On a boat doing the Sydney Hobart, having clear direction and clear leadership is actually very important. And part of why we performed beyond expectation for LawConnect is because the boat is very well run.”
After a 10-year break, Christian has recently returned to manage LEAP as the previous group CEO fell ill. Ever the innovator, he is ‘loving’ taking the business into a new phase – artificial intelligence (AI). “Small law firms are probably one of the areas that would benefit most from AI. In many cases, a small law firm is trying to help a person without it costing too much money. So we are very involved in that transition at the moment to help our clients get the best of AI.”
Come December, Christian will be back on LawConnect to take on rivals Comanche. LawConnect will return to ‘underdog’ status as Comanche has a new charter with ‘far more accomplished sailors than me running a much better boat!’ Christian laughs.
Somehow it seems that being the underdog is just the sort of challenge Christian relishes.