This is awesome and I'm really happy to see venture dollars being spent on the legal industry. One of my gripes has always been that quality legal is traditionally expensive to obtain because the "quality" part in legal work tends to come from literally practicing law for a long time and knowledge about many things quite deeply. Over time law firms obviously grow in standing and therefore size, increasing costs. This can easily leave a huge part of society under-served. In theory, much of the cost is research by humans, and I presume research by humans garnering key insights could be done somewhat algorithmically by scanning case law for key points. I hope we see more and more automation and ML services applied to the industry of providing council around aspects of the law.
Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup
11–20 of 102 posts
Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup
#12Hello HN! We are excited to be building in the legal space. Raising money is a necessary step, but Atrium LTS' biggest accomplishment so far is the great team of experts we have assembled here. My cofounders are Augie Rakow (former partner at Orrick, where he worked on over 100 financings and represented Cruise through their acquisition to GM), BeBe Chueh (lawyer turned founder who sold her last company to LegalZoom)…
I am wondering - why did you decide to raise outside money at all? I assume you would have been able to do the round yourself, save time / effort around the fundraising process and concentrate on product instead?
Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup
#13For any legal startup to work, Lawyers either A) have to really want what he's building or, B) have to have it to be competitive against other firms.
I think both of these are pretty high bars, especially since Lawyers bill by the hour.
Finding a good efficient lawyer is much more about the Lawyers personality, knowledge, and ability and much less about the technology. A good lawyer can solve things very quickly at little cost. A bad lawyer can take the same matter, spend a ton of money researching it, working it, discussing it, etc, and still come out with a poor result.
I'm interested to see what he's building, but I won't be surprised if it doesn't upend the legal world.
Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup
#14Hello HN! We are excited to be building in the legal space. Raising money is a necessary step, but Atrium LTS' biggest accomplishment so far is the great team of experts we have assembled here. My cofounders are Augie Rakow (former partner at Orrick, where he worked on over 100 financings and represented Cruise through their acquisition to GM), BeBe Chueh (lawyer turned founder who sold her last company to LegalZoom)…
Quick question: Are you hiring senior rails developers for remote positions?
Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup
#15What happened to Justin's Snapchat? Still kicking? Kinda stopped following when Insta-Stories launched. Miss Klaus though <3
Still snapping some. It's actually much harder to remember to make social media now that I'm out of YC. When I was at YC, there was a defined schedule, so I had lots of free time to mess around on snapchat. Now that I'm back in the startup world, I spend most of my time thinking about and working on my company, and forget to snapchat. Klaus says hi.
>Now that I'm back in the startup world, I spend most of my time thinking about and working on my company, and forget to snapchat.
Shouldn't you have been thinking about and working on YC when you were there?
Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup
#16For any legal startup to work, Lawyers either A) have to really want what he's building or, B) have to have it to be competitive against other firms. I think both of these are pretty high bars, especially since Lawyers bill by the hour. Finding a good efficient lawyer is much more about the Lawyers personality, knowledge, and ability and much less about the technology. A good lawyer can solve things very quickly at l…
"A good lawyer can solve things very quickly at little cost. A bad lawyer can take the same matter, spend a ton of money researching it, working it, discussing it, etc, and still come out with a poor result."
Not to be too cynical but given those two options of good and bad lawyers - who is going to be able to charge more fees to an unsuspecting client?
Edit: I can't believe that I said "Not to be too cynical" about lawyers....
Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup
#17Hello HN! We are excited to be building in the legal space. Raising money is a necessary step, but Atrium LTS' biggest accomplishment so far is the great team of experts we have assembled here. My cofounders are Augie Rakow (former partner at Orrick, where he worked on over 100 financings and represented Cruise through their acquisition to GM), BeBe Chueh (lawyer turned founder who sold her last company to LegalZoom)…
I am wondering - why did you decide to raise outside money at all? I assume you would have been able to do the round yourself, save time / effort around the fundraising process and concentrate on product instead?
It's market/opportunity validation when you can convince others to share the risk.
Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup
#18For any legal startup to work, Lawyers either A) have to really want what he's building or, B) have to have it to be competitive against other firms. I think both of these are pretty high bars, especially since Lawyers bill by the hour. Finding a good efficient lawyer is much more about the Lawyers personality, knowledge, and ability and much less about the technology. A good lawyer can solve things very quickly at l…
"A good lawyer can solve things very quickly at little cost. A bad lawyer can take the same matter, spend a ton of money researching it, working it, discussing it, etc, and still come out with a poor result." Not to be too cynical but given those two options of good and bad lawyers - who is going to be able to charge more fees to an unsuspecting client? Edit: I can't believe that I said "Not to be too cynical" about…
"who is going to be able to charge more fees to an unsuspecting client?"
That's my point, finding a great lawyer isn't easy, and I don't think it's related the underlying technology. The tech can make a great lawyer even better.
Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
"A good lawyer can solve things very quickly at little cost. A bad lawyer can take the same matter, spend a ton of money researching it, working it, discussing it, etc, and still come out with a poor result." Not to be too cynical but given those two options of good and bad lawyers - who is going to be able to charge more fees to an unsuspecting client? Edit: I can't believe that I said "Not to be too cynical" about…
"who is going to be able to charge more fees to an unsuspecting client?" That's my point, finding a great lawyer isn't easy, and I don't think it's related the underlying technology. The tech can make a great lawyer even better.
I'd love to have some kind of portal where you can actually track activity on your legal work and see billing as it happens.
Of course, I can see why lawyers generally resist that kind of transparency...
Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup
#20Most startups are pitched with a problem statement: our users want X, and here's how we're going to give it to them. This article talks about how lawyers don't do X and how Justin thinks they should — but not necessarily that they want to. As someone who spent 7 years working in biglaw, I can attest that there are many technology-related things that would make lawyers more efficient. For example, the large law firm I…
Considering the list of investors, maybe the idea is to drive change from the client side. Basically, "if you don't do business this way, I will take my business elsewhere." Law seems like one of the last hold out professions where business practices are not driven by customer demand or expectations