Grahame Cohen can’t speak Spanish.

But one night, inside a club in Spain, he had a conversation he’d never forget.

Cohen, then in his early 30s, was in the country for a salsa dance congress. He was nervous. He was uncomfortable. He hadn’t done much partner dancing. After asking a woman to dance, though, his doubts and insecurities faded away.

“We laughed, and some things went wrong, but we understood each other,” Cohen said, remembering the evening. “At the end of this dance—she knew I wasn’t from Spain—but we finished the dance and both started talking to each other as if we were going to understand each other. And then we remembered that, actually, we can’t speak each other’s language.”

He continued: “Because we forgot. Because we had such good communication.”

Cohen understands dance as its own language. In the years since, he has danced at salsa clubs all over the world. He met his wife through the hobby. And the folks he’s danced with have left a deep mark on his life—and given him a global network of friends.

Being open to exploration and opportunity changed his life. Today, he wants P/C insurance carriers to be open to exploring how the newly fully fledged program his legal technology company, Epoq, launched across the U.S. can differentiate their offerings and help the people they work with.

“Frankly, there’s a lot of good we can do together in this market,” said Cohen, 56.

After graduating with a finance and property degree and first-class honors from City University’s Cass Business School in London, Cohen started his first business, a dual marketing-retailer called Campus Computers. That company was designed to promote and sell personal tech to students. The marketing side—a roadshow across UK college campuses—was a success, but the lack of sales eventually brought the company down.

“When you have a failure, unless you’re not willing to analyze it, you’re going to end up understanding some of the things you did wrong,” Cohen said when asked what his experience with Campus Computers taught him. “Primarily, it was probably not having all the right people around me.”

After Campus Computers folded, however, Cohen persuaded a developer on his team to join him in a new endeavor. That endeavor was Epoq. Cohen worked with family members with legal backgrounds to build Desktop Lawyer, one of the UK’s first online legal services providers.

He convinced major magazines of the day—Epoq launched in 1997—to include the product as a cover disk on their publications, and sales took off. The legal technology company survived the dot-com bubble burst, and it continues to grow today, with the United States now being Epoq’s biggest market.

“I think most luck comes from persistence and endurance,” Cohen said. “Because if you persist and endure, and you’re open … to people [and] ideas, then the luck will come your way. But it’s hard-earned luck.”

Epoq positioned itself as a viable digital legal service “bolt-on” provider in the U.K. for insurance companies after the dot-com crash, offering a version of its services in the U.S. nearly a decade ago. Put simply, insurance carriers could add Epoq’s program to existing insurance policies to give policyholders streamlined access to customizable legal document preparation.

They still can today. This can be a stream of non-risk income for companies, Cohen explained, and agents and brokers appreciate the Epoq platform because it allows them to point policyholders to answers for legal questions that they may not be qualified to answer.

Cohen said that part of the program manages and mitigates risk across personal lines as well as commercial lines, including property, contractors, restaurant, event and farm insurance.

“All these key things have all sorts of risk management and risk transfer aspect that the insurer wants the policyholder to have,” Cohen said. “And it’s good for the policyholder to have.”

Now, Epoq also offers a unique mediation coverage product, as well as several other legal services. A first-to-market coverage in the U.S., backed by Lloyd’s via reinsurance, Epoq’s mediation insurance provides up to $50,000 in coverage for both attorney-assisted mediation expenses and mediator costs when disputes arise.

In addition to this, Epoq provides AI-powered legal support through a service that interviews policyholders who have legal questions and routes the information to specialized attorneys who review the content and provide expert guidance based on applicable state laws.

The company offers legal document review, too, by qualified attorneys in each state who review legal documents—whether created through Epoq’s platform or external sources—and ensure contracts meet local requirements and contain language that minimizes liability exposure.

With its document preparation services available in the U.S. for several years, this year, Epoq’s full program became available nationwide for U.S. P&C carriers, with state filings and carrier rollouts occurring on a phased basis.

“So, we package that up at quite low costs … and the carriers generate non-risk income, have great messages, and it’s extremely valuable for policyholders, and agents love it,” Cohen said of the full program.

Outside of work, dance remains a daily part of Cohen’s life. He dances at clubs with his wife, and if he pushes a few buttons in the dance studio inside his London home, disco lights will flash, creating a party atmosphere for his family and guests.

Toward the end of the day, he’ll put on songs and dance.

“You can enter a flow state,” he said. “Where the music is perfect, you get into the groove, and then you’re just doing some moves and it feels really good. And everything else doesn’t matter. You’re just there at that moment in time.”