| Beckie Krantz calls herself a geek — a description perhaps not attributed to a lot of women. A largely self-taught computer programmer who has a law degree, she has found her niche in Legicrawler, a company that helps corporations track state and federal legislation.
Krantz, who recently announced she will run for the state House of Representatives from the 26th Legislative District, created the company with her husband, Dennis, in 1989. In those days, lack of conveniences such as the Internet made legislation tracking much more tedious. Since there was no software for the kind of work they needed, Krantz wrote her own. Now, thanks to technology — and Krantz’s programming skills — a lot of the work is automated.
Legicrawler caters to companies such as the McDonald’s Corp. and Stewart Title that need to stay in touch with new laws all around the country, as well as groups such as the Grocery Manufacturers Association. Krantz is the company CEO and systems manager while her husband is president and handles sale and financial management.
Krantz graduated from the Puget Sound School of Law (after starting out in literature initially) in 1988 and helped state Supreme Court Justice Robert Utter research the history and intent of the state Constitution. She also helped create the first online public database for the court system, and later a death penalty database. Then one day, the couple talked about starting an online legal services database — and soon after Legicrawler was born, after a focus group of attorneys told them they could use online legislative information. Eventually, the database was migrated to the World Wide Web, and included information from all the states, federal government and Canada.
“The clients we serve have operations in every state,” Krantz said. “They need a homogeneous way of having the information presented to them.” The clients get their information in one report, which contains relevant bills and other details based on their needs. The online report includes the text of the bill and the ability for clients to post notes, labels, and save the information to their own password-protected database — “so they are all on the same sheet of music,” Krantz said.
The company has been growing, and Krantz said they are ready for the next level, moving it out of their home so they can hire full-time employees. “That’s a big challenge in itself,” she said. “You can start a cottage industry but at some point you have to grow.”. |
