The bar you're holding.

Who's in the room

ZINGERS is attorneys only — solo and boutique, anywhere in the world. We verify bar admission against the published roll. Then we read every application end to end — practice description, two work samples, the way you describe what you turn away — and decide. Acceptance hovers near 19%. Reviews take 5–7 days, always.

What we look for: five or more years post-admission, a body of writing we can read, opinions strong enough to disagree with, and the kind of specificity that only comes from being good at one corner of one practice. Bar admission is the baseline, not the threshold. Reading a memo you wrote is what tells us whether you'd be a good Tuesday-morning call.

Our admissions team is a small group of practicing attorneys. They keep notes. Each year we publish acceptance rates by jurisdiction and practice area in the broadsheet.

How we counter our own bias

Subjective judgment cuts both ways — we know our reviewers' tastes lean toward certain kinds of writing and away from others. Three things we do about it:

• Two readers per application — independent reads, then a comparison. Disagreements get a third.
• Anonymous re-reads quarterly — we strip names and re-score a random sample of accepted and rejected applications.
• Reapplication is welcome — six months after a decline, with new work. About 8% of declines reapply, and about a third of those are accepted.

If a decline felt wrong to you, write back. Real human reads the reply.

Conflict checks

Before any match is finalized, three checks run:

• Adverse-party / co-counsel conflicts — existing matters, former partnerships, opposing-counsel history. Self-declared at intake; we add what members report after meetings.
• Practice-area overlap — same jurisdiction, same niche, same client tier often means awkward referrals rather than productive ones.
• Personal blocks — anyone you've marked "don't match me with them" is invisible to the model.

You can mark a conflict at any time in Settings → Conflicts. The block is silent: they never learn you did it.

What stays private

• Your asks, your replies, your match history — visible only to members. Never indexed, never public.
• Match outcomes you log — visible only to you and our membership team.
• Revenue attributed — visible only to you. Used for community stats in aggregated, anonymized form.
• Messages between members — end-to-end on our side; we don't read them without a reported complaint.

NDA templates

When a match discussion moves into client specifics, you may want to formalize confidentiality before the call. We maintain two template NDAs — a light one-page mutual and a heavier transactional version — drafted by practicing attorneys in our membership. Use them or don't. Download below.

If someone crosses a line

No-shows. A pitch disguised as an ask. Information shared outside the agreed scope. A client poached mid-engagement. All of these are reportable.

Send Shikma an email with "Trust concern" in the subject. She responds within 4 business hours, always personally. Patterns trigger a pause; confirmed violations trigger removal. Two members have been removed in the first year. Both knew why.

What we promise

• We never sell or share your data — not with advertisers, not with partners, never.
• We don't run algorithmic experiments on members without consent.
• If ZINGERS shuts down, you get 30 days to export everything and 60 days of ongoing service.
• Shikma is accountable to members first, investors second. It's in our operating agreement.