The call to show up

Some people spend their lives searching for work that matters. Mike Lemm kept finding it in the same place: beside someone who needed help.

Before he co-founded Andco, Mike was a lawyer. He had studied at Cornell and Harvard Law School, learned to navigate complex systems, and built the skills to advocate with precision. But the legal work that stayed closest to him was not defined by prestige. It was the pro bono work.

Those cases brought him face to face with people who did not have the means to secure representation on their own. They were often frightened, overwhelmed, or facing a system they did not know how to navigate. Mike found meaning in standing beside them when the path forward felt uncertain.

He wanted more of that feeling. Not recognition. Not another credential. Another way to serve.

Mike found it in the Glen Ellyn Volunteer Fire Company.

The company has protected Glen Ellyn since 1907. Its motto is simple: ‘Neighbors Helping Neighbors.’ Mike learned about the company before he even lived in the village. He attended a meet and greet, saw what service looked like there, and ultimately moved to Glen Ellyn in order to join.

Becoming a firefighter meant training for the moments no family wants to face. It meant waking in the dark when an alarm sounded. It meant leaving the warmth and safety of home because somewhere nearby, a neighbor had called for help.

Mike has spoken about how people sometimes laugh when so many firefighters respond to a routine alarm in the middle of the night. But from his perspective, the number of people who arrive is not excessive. It is a promise made visible. For the family waiting inside, the most important thing is that someone came.

That trust is earned one call at a time. It lives in the sound of boots on a station floor, the glow of a porch light at an impossible hour, and the relief of seeing help arrive. It asks a person to place someone else’s fear ahead of their own comfort.

For Mike, becoming a full-fledged volunteer firefighter was one of the best decisions he had ever made. His young daughter understood the meaning of it in her own way. When people asked what her father did, she skipped over the technology company. She proudly told them that he was a firefighter.

Law and firefighting may look like different lives. Mike saw the same human need in both.

A client seeking legal help and a neighbor calling the fire company are each placing trust in another person during a vulnerable moment. They need someone who will listen closely, understand what must happen next, and stay present when the process becomes difficult.

That understanding helped inspire Mike to build in personal injury.

People rarely enter the personal injury system on an ordinary day. They arrive after a collision, an injury, a frightening diagnosis, or a sudden loss of stability. While they try to recover, their attorneys begin a demanding process of gathering reports, opening claims, requesting records, tracking bills, and following up across disconnected channels.

The work is administrative, but its weight is human. Every delayed record belongs to a person waiting for progress. Every unanswered request can slow a case for someone whose life has already been interrupted.

Mike knew that service is not only the dramatic moment when help arrives. It is also what happens afterward. It is the patient follow-up, the careful handoff, and the determination to keep moving when a system makes the next step harder than it should be.

That belief became part of Andco.

Andco builds AI agents that help personal injury firms run the end-to-end pre-litigation case workup. The technology retrieves police reports, opens insurance claims, and collects medical records and bills across the channels where this work actually happens.

The goal is not to remove people from the practice of law. It is to give legal teams more room to do what people need most: listen, advise, advocate, and care.

Mike’s path to Andco began long before the company had a name. It began in pro bono conversations with people who needed an advocate. It continued at the Glen Ellyn Volunteer Fire Company, where neighbors answer neighbors at every hour. And it lives today in a company built around a simple conviction: when someone asks for help, showing up matters.

There are many ways to answer a call. Mike chose more than one.