During the course of his 15-year legal career, Abdi Shayesteh has held a variety of Big Law, government and in-house roles. Throughout all of those experiences, Shayesteh said the biggest frustration he had was that his legal education didn't adequately prepare him to practice law.

“In every setting, it was about sink or swim,” said Shayesteh, a former senior associate at King & Spalding. “You come into these places, there's no guide, there's no book, there's no mentor. Sometimes you got lucky and you found a mentor [and] as much good intentions they had to help you, their time was very limited.”

As a result, Shayesteh channeled those frustrations into creating AltaClaro Inc., an online platform he founded in late 2015 to link lawyers to top legal professionals providing webinars, mentorship and counseling to other lawyers throughout the various stages of their legal careers. Since officially launching in February of this year, the startup has picked up close to 600 registered users, ranging from unemployed law school graduates to longtime practicing lawyers.