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Startup wants to build tools for lawyers to speed up legal services

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Startup wants to build tools for lawyers to speed up legal services

#41

Post by wil421 »

rayiner wrote: post #32

> As anyone who has racked up legal fees due to lawyers’ mounting billable hours can attest, law firms remain almost surprisingly low-tech operations. That’s like saying programming remains surprisingly low tech because you walk into a tech company and everyone is hunched over an emacs window. Even at the fanciest Wall Street law firms, 10-20% of billed time is written off. The largest clients who get sued a lot are…

Rayiner,

Whenever someone on HN talks about bringing tech to law firms I inevitably hear they are opposed to improving their process. It would lead to less billable hours for the firm.

Is this true? Not specifically talking about the top firms but firms in general.

Re: Startup wants to build tools for lawyers to speed up legal services

#43

Post by [deleted] »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #40
justin wrote: post #26

Headline is a little misleading. We started LTS, our legal tech company, with the goal of helping lawyers provide legal services to startups in a more speedy, transparent and price predicable way. To us, that means building tools that lawyers use, and not creating the Uber of lawyers or a master AI that replaces lawyers (I don't think the latter is possible right now). Atrium, the law firm founded by two of my LTS co…

> Headline is a little misleading I guess you can't say "Your article hits a factual error before it even begins" to the Washington Post, huh.

[deleted]

Re: Startup wants to build tools for lawyers to speed up legal services

#44

Post by gist »

rayiner wrote: post #32

> As anyone who has racked up legal fees due to lawyers’ mounting billable hours can attest, law firms remain almost surprisingly low-tech operations. That’s like saying programming remains surprisingly low tech because you walk into a tech company and everyone is hunched over an emacs window. Even at the fanciest Wall Street law firms, 10-20% of billed time is written off. The largest clients who get sued a lot are…

> (e.g. we pay a flat $5 million per month and you hanldle all our products liability work)

Question. Is it standard when a client does that to then demand or ask to review time records? The purpose would be to be able to then use that to bid out the work to other firms.

How would the law firm handle the request? Does this happen?

If so I would think it would be an advantage to structure billing and time tracking in a way that wouldn't allow it to be used so that a lower bid could be place since a competitor would know the time requirements.

Re: Startup wants to build tools for lawyers to speed up legal services

#45

Post by ABCLAW »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #38
ABCLAW wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Justin, with respect, there are many organizations working within the structure that you've put together. All of them get by on the basis that they argue the scope of what software does is not the practice of law. My concern is that in order to secure regulator approval for this position most of these legal support contractors substantially misrepresent the scope and depth of the work they provide. Do you have any pl…

> most of these legal support contractors substantially misrepresent the scope and depth of the work they provide. source?

I work in the field, have money invested in the field and have spoken with both the organizations in question (as well as their compliance counsels) as well as their regulators.

In law, new business models often are in violation, compliance wise, until they make the case that they shouldn't be. If the model is successful & profitable, they fight to change the rules and sometimes end up with a complete or partial victory in that campaign - this is largely a political fight at the bar. If not, they vanish and the lack of regulatory oversight is irrelevant.

Can't give you more than that without going out of bounds.

Reviewing Atrium's legal careers section, they clearly understand the need to monitor the regulatory environment with respect to compliance - see their lead counsel post. That said, I'd counsel justin not to reply to my question if I was advising him.

Re: Startup wants to build tools for lawyers to speed up legal services

#46

Post by ChrisSD »

aswanson wrote: post #30
justin wrote: post #26

Headline is a little misleading. We started LTS, our legal tech company, with the goal of helping lawyers provide legal services to startups in a more speedy, transparent and price predicable way. To us, that means building tools that lawyers use, and not creating the Uber of lawyers or a master AI that replaces lawyers (I don't think the latter is possible right now). Atrium, the law firm founded by two of my LTS co…

Headlines are almost guaranteed to be misleading. That's why I click on the comments before the article. Sensationalism should not be rewarded.

I've complained about some BBC headlines before. I was essentially told that there's a kind of headline exemption. So long as the article at some point contradicts the headline then it doesn't matter, apparently.

Re: Startup wants to build tools for lawyers to speed up legal services

#47

Post by goeric »

justin wrote: post #26

Headline is a little misleading. We started LTS, our legal tech company, with the goal of helping lawyers provide legal services to startups in a more speedy, transparent and price predicable way. To us, that means building tools that lawyers use, and not creating the Uber of lawyers or a master AI that replaces lawyers (I don't think the latter is possible right now). Atrium, the law firm founded by two of my LTS co…

If you're ever looking for PM's this is right up my ally. I was the co-founder and head of product at Naritiv (Techstars/Disney Accel S14, acquired by Hootsuite). I also ran ops as well and dealt with our law firms (corp and entertainment) every week. Would love to talk! Email in profile.

Re: Startup wants to build tools for lawyers to speed up legal services

#48

Post by markpapadakis »

I thoughts sales people would be the first to go. I mean, they are are often colloquially/affectiohally known as sales droids in the Valley :)

Kissing aside, if you got laws and said laws can be interpreted to the letter I.e deterministically then maybe this is bound to happen sooner rather than later.

Re: Startup wants to build tools for lawyers to speed up legal services

#49

Post by dingbat »

wil421 wrote: post #41
rayiner wrote: post #32

> As anyone who has racked up legal fees due to lawyers’ mounting billable hours can attest, law firms remain almost surprisingly low-tech operations. That’s like saying programming remains surprisingly low tech because you walk into a tech company and everyone is hunched over an emacs window. Even at the fanciest Wall Street law firms, 10-20% of billed time is written off. The largest clients who get sued a lot are…

Rayiner, Whenever someone on HN talks about bringing tech to law firms I inevitably hear they are opposed to improving their process. It would lead to less billable hours for the firm. Is this true? Not specifically talking about the top firms but firms in general.

even aside from the billable hours issue, there is the less obvious problem that in many cases, it is in the interest of the client that there be less transparency and more obfuscation of material that might be unfavorable. improving processes and making it easier to analyze data is not necessarily aligned with the incentives of large company who has been named as a defendant in a class action suit, for example.

Re: Startup wants to build tools for lawyers to speed up legal services

#50

Post by gargarplex »

rayiner wrote: post #39
aswanson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick question: for jury selection, do trial lawyers used a statistically tested line of inquiry for prospective jurors, or is it just seat-of-the-pants, intuition based selection?

They hire jury consultants, who do those things.

And the jury consultants, in turn, consult statistical tables. For example, one dimension they look at is authoritarianism. A person is deemed "authoritarian" if they are likely to side with the State in a criminal trial.

I helped my buddy, who is an owner of a jury consulting firm, port one of the statistical tables to a ruby model. Here's the code, if you're curious.

https://gist.github.com/zackster/ac3bca42c441f16cbf2b4895fdb...

We wanted to build software to democratize the jury selection process (and bring justice to all, not just those who could afford expensive jury consultants) but the marketing process was kind of challenging and the lawyers we reached out to were unresponsive. Also, jury consultants want to keep this knowledge a trade secret in order to justify their expensive fees despite these statistical tables being available for purchase by anyone who knows where to look.

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