It was an experience no lawyer should ever have. Cooley Godward Kronish associate Eric Koester was at a conference and could not remember a client's name. Not the savviest move when it comes to business and client development.

But Koester managed to take a bad moment and turn it into something beneficial for himself and others -- he developed an Apple iPhone application that connects faces to names. (Hat Tip: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.)

Koester's app, Learn That Name, was born at a weekend retreat. Cooley Godward partners with Startup Weekend -- a nonprofit that recruits developers, business managers, lawyers and marketing gurus, amongst many others -- for 36 hours of entrepreneurial boot camp meant to foster ideas for new companies or projects.

Startup Weekend's last retreat was in late August on the Redmond, Wash.-based campus of Microsoft. Koester, who practices in the firm's emerging companies group, was one of the attendees.

"I was there to provide support to any companies that came out of it," Koester says. "But I ended up coming up with an idea myself."

The "Weekend" includes several pitching sessions -- those attending work in groups and then present their business ideas to an audience that will ultimately vote on the 15 best ideas pitched.

Koester says his idea for Learn That Name, designed to help users connect names with photos through their LinkedIn accounts, received "rousing support" after his pitch. (Click here for a YouTube clip of Koester's presentation and here for his own blog entry about the experience.)

Koester pulled together a team of 14 people -- "programmers, marketers, back-end developers, and a crazy lawyer in me," he says -- to bring the application to life. Within 24 hours, the motley group had a working prototype that iPhone owners could use.

By the end of the weekend, the group decided that Learn That Name was a viable business. Prospective users could progress through 10 levels of sociability -- schmuck, drive-by hand shaker, social butterfly, self-promoter, casual networker, wallflower, super socialite, people person, certified connector and lastly master networker -- to sharpen their glad-handing game and improve their people skills.

Apple approved the application about a week ago. Learn That Name is now available to iPhone users for $1.

"As a lawyer, I'm used to providing documents and legal advice," Koester says. "It's really interesting being able to build something from the ground up that people will use and buy. I can see why people get bit by [the entrepreneurial] bug."

But the 32-year-old Koester, a Heller Ehrman refugee (he was a member of the firm's Venture Law Group), isn't ready to give up the legal gig yet. His legal expertise came in handy in the three weeks between the inception of the idea for Learn That Name and the launch of the finished product.

Apple will receive 30 percent of the royalties from each sale of Learn That Name. Since the 14-person group all made equal contributions to the creation of the app, Koester says everyone is taking an equal share of the remainder of the proceeds.

"We set up an LLC where every person will get a nickel from each sale," he says, adding that the group expects to make about $7,000 per person after all is said and done.

While it's not exactly a financial windfall, Koester says that he's thinking of developing another version for Facebook that will rely on a smaller group of developers and will reap the lion's share of the royalties. Meantime, Koester's paycheck still is cut by Cooley Godward.

"[Creating something] is not easy," Koester says. "I definitely would like to continue doing this as a hobby, but it's not as glamorous as people think. You don't just hit it big like with a Google or Microsoft."

If anything, Koester thinks that having the experience on the entrepreneurial side will enhance his capabilities as a lawyer for emerging companies.

"It's different when instead of seeing people talk about a new product, you're actually doing it yourself," he says. "This experience helped me become my own client in a sort of way, so I could see how things were on the other side."

So is Koester any better at recognizing client names?

"The last time I played I made it to 'drive-by hand shaker,'" he says. "I have too many contacts!"

This article first appeared on The Am Law Daily blog on AmericanLawyer.com.