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Ask HN: Why are there so few law startups?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few law startups?

#61

Post by codingdave »

bmulholland wrote: post #55
codingdave wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we likely have some common ground on the problems we are hitting. We are doing OK on accuracy - we do keep all approved versions in an archive. The problems relate more to the plethora of ways lite can fail - I don't have my full list in front of me, but as a minor example, deleting an entire bulleted item from a list leaves the bullet in place within the editor as normal text. It sounds nitpicky, but it really…

For what it's worth, we're hitting many of those same problems even without lite. People are finnicky about how their contracts look, and they tend to spend a lot of time getting them to look just right. It's especially difficult with the jump from Word to HTML, even when it's abstracted via e.g. CKEditor. May I ask where you work?

I want to respect the privacy of my employer, and not connect my public discussions to them, but I'd be happy to move over to a non-public discussion if you want to talk more about where I am working and what we are up to... let me know a good way to reach out to you if you would like to head that direction.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few law startups?

#62

Post by zeruch »

Part of it is the inherently risk averse/conservative orientation of the legal field (much of it arguably justified in the sense that in a field where extreme precision of language is a minimum, and strict auditing common, the "fast and loose" approach of agile-centric startup culture runs contra to a lot of legal instincts. Another commenter laid it out well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9528423 "Startups practicing law (rather than providing law-related services other than legal practice) are difficult given restrictions on the practice of law, including legal ethics rules (e.g., things like ABA Model Rule 5.4(d) [0].)

Also, while in other industries if you break the rules of the industry the corporation pays a fine (which is part of the risk of a startup) and the principals all move on with their lives and livelihoods.

Lawyers who break the rules of their industry can be disbarred. While this doesn't completely stop all move-fast-and-break-things in the field, it does limit the willingness of people in the field to engage in it."

That said, I think there are areas where some innovation could occur, particularly around e-discovery and in lexical search/dbs.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few law startups?

#63

Post by jacobheller »

I'm a bit late to the game, but I'm the CEO of Casetext (YC S13), https://casetext.com, which is a startup taking on the legal research space.

I wrote a post on Medium that addresses why you don't see many lawyer-founders that you might find interesting or relevant: https://medium.com/@jacob_heller/from-think-like-a-lawyer-to...

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few law startups?

#65

Post by markoblad »

valcu.co (I'm the founder) is automating corporate transactions, with startups currently using the Delaware incorporation and setup tools. We are working on some heavier stuff (e.g., equity financing transactions integrated with a cap table). It's not surprising to me how difficult it is to innovate here as there are so many moving pieces. Scripting up the NVCA forms runs about 250 variables per document and requires conditionals and loops, which most merge tools can't handle. Control provisions, amendment provisions, board rights, protective provisions and many other provisions have to be modeled separately. Share numbers and capitalization reps have to either be entered individually (meaning you have to build a separate model), or the tools have to build in a cap table. It's been build, build, build-we're over 100k lines of code.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few law startups?

#66

Post by bornbarrister »

Hi, I am a lawyer and founder of FeedLEX (feedlex.com ). The idea behind it is to provide curated legal news at one place for Indian citizen. We are trying to build certain tools apart from FeedLEX but Lack of funding and being technologically naive, I am facing lots of problem in developing a proper web portal to shape my true idea. We are looking for funding and people from technology background to join us.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few law startups?

#67

Post by christyweisner »

randall wrote: post #47
agounaris wrote: post #38

Why a "startup" is only related to a technology? Why can't I make a kebab startup?

A startup is a company designed to grow quickly in this context, not simply a new company. No matter how awesome your kebabs, it's unlikely the company could grow at the rate of Airbnb or Uber. http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

Although it's not tech in the traditional sense of a start up you all are discussing here, legal process outsourcing was a CRAZY idea back in 2004, when my company (Pangea3) was founded. Law + process + India = startup just the same. It's just now a $1 billion industry.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few law startups?

#68

Post by SK1 »

The "law startup" space is pretty active, but I think it helps to break things down a bit. Most probably would fit into one of these categories:

(1) Startups that aim for the consumer market by replacing lawyers in some way (e.g., LegalZoom, Shake, or other document automation software companies) (2) Startups that aim for the consumer market by connecting people with lawyers (e.g., Priori Legal) (3) Startups that aim for the legal support/services market by offering cheaper/better alternatives to existing software offerings (e.g., Ravel Law for legal research or Clio for practice management) (4) Startups that aim for the legal support/services market by innovating in areas that traditionally have been inefficient and/or paper-intensive (e.g., Lex Machina for IP analytics or eDepoze for depositions)

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few law startups?

#69

Post by bmulholland »

codingdave wrote: post #61
bmulholland wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, we're hitting many of those same problems even without lite. People are finnicky about how their contracts look, and they tend to spend a lot of time getting them to look just right. It's especially difficult with the jump from Word to HTML, even when it's abstracted via e.g. CKEditor. May I ask where you work?

I want to respect the privacy of my employer, and not connect my public discussions to them, but I'd be happy to move over to a non-public discussion if you want to talk more about where I am working and what we are up to... let me know a good way to reach out to you if you would like to head that direction.

I have added my email to my profile

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few law startups?

#70

Post by currandye »

You’re certainly right in saying that the law and law firms have been slow to adapt. There are many areas that are ripe for innovation; document management systems, e-signing documents etc.

And as you say, it’s hard to know where to look for startups in the legal sphere. I’ve found a really good site called http://www.lawhackers.co which lists all the legal-tech startups and what they do. Also, their newsletter is great for keeping up to date with the field.

I myself work for a legal-tech startup called https://www.lexoo.co.uk/ We focus on solving three problems that businesses face when trying to hire a lawyer:

1) there is no price transparency 2) it's hard to judge the quality of lawyers 3) It’s time consuming to get multiple quotes

We help businesses find great lawyers by getting them multiple quotes for their legal matter from specialist lawyers, so they can compare them side by side.

I hope that’s helpful!

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