Atrium shuts down, laying off 100 • Hacker News Board

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#71

Post by manigandham » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:44 AM UTC

slap_shot wrote: post #54

m0zg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like an hour of a good lawyer time. Mine charges $350/hr. But your point stands. I don't see how his work could be done with "templates". Most of the time I pay him for contract reviews.

High end firms can easily be $800+/hr for attorneys. I believe Wilson Sonsini was $1200/hr for an attorney I was recommended.

That's high-end. Most of the time, all you need is a mid-level/independent lawyer that charges less than $400/hr or even bills on per-project basis.

Cost also doesn't guarantee quality. You're paying for resources, specialization, general counsel that can delegate, and insurance against mistakes. Useful but only when you really need it.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#72

Post by arbuge » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

burgerquizz wrote: post #55

Justin Kan got into a terrible motorbike accident few months ago [1] . He then went through lot of thoughts on meaningful life and such kind of things in his tweets later. Would that impact the performance / outcome of Atrium? [1] https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1191821878567915520

Looks like a bicycle accident, not a motorbike accident.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#73

Post by manigandham » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

lmeyerov wrote: post #63

tempsy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

working at a zombie company that has no traction is not fun for anyone part of the “challenge” of being a famous founder is you can raise pre product. $75M seems insane for a company like that. Burn couldn’t have been that high, mostly rent and salaries, no heavy computation, etc.

100 people x 150k yr = $15M. Add insurance, office, heaaavy marketing, sales commission, non-frugal everything.. I'm guessing $20-30M over their 2+yrs. Maybe even more on people bc hiring lawyers. Weirdly, the investors are happier with that than 5 smaller series A's of money-making / real-IP companies with existing growth engines. Easier to bet on nothing vs improving. I do find the flameout odd, and not isolated to…

The end of the first paragraph says: "The separate Atrium law firm will continue to operate." The legal talent already did spin-off with the last pivot.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#74

Post by aresant » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:50 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #10

minimaxir wrote: post #2

This happened less than 2 months after a "pivot to tools": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22040238

Never really seen a "pivot to tools" work (after I tried it with one company, and it failed, I started noticing when others tried it too).

I know several including housecall which is now housecall pro

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#75

Post by tempsy » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:50 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #73

lmeyerov wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 people x 150k yr = $15M. Add insurance, office, heaaavy marketing, sales commission, non-frugal everything.. I'm guessing $20-30M over their 2+yrs. Maybe even more on people bc hiring lawyers. Weirdly, the investors are happier with that than 5 smaller series A's of money-making / real-IP companies with existing growth engines. Easier to bet on nothing vs improving. I do find the flameout odd, and not isolated to…

The end of the first paragraph says: " The separate Atrium law firm will continue to operate. " The legal talent already did spin-off with the last pivot.

They laid off a bunch of lawyers so no idea who is still working there

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#76

Post by eshyong » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:54 AM UTC

arbuge wrote: post #72

burgerquizz wrote: post #55

Justin Kan got into a terrible motorbike accident few months ago [1] . He then went through lot of thoughts on meaningful life and such kind of things in his tweets later. Would that impact the performance / outcome of Atrium? [1] https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1191821878567915520

Looks like a bicycle accident, not a motorbike accident.

Still, looks like a nasty injury. That's enough to make anyone ponder life

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#77

Post by gnicholas » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:55 AM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #69

gnicholas wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top partners were already at $1,200/hr when I left the law in 2014. They’re now hovering around $2,000/hr.

You don't need a "top partner" for contract review.

That’s true. But for a big enough deal, you want partners to be reviewing — at least at a conceptual level — the way the deal is structured.

I’ve seen agreements that were 99% good, but a problem in the other 1% made the whole thing worthless.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#78

Post by manigandham » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:58 AM UTC

Legal industry is already tech-enabled. Templates, digital docs and signatures, OCR, AI/NLP/semantic processing, collaborative editing, and more are already used by modern law firms. There's no easy software-based efficiency left to find.

The major work is still done by humans because of the liability, complexity and customization of every case. The next step requires a revolution in legal process, not just more software.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#79

Post by dmix » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 3:03 AM UTC

eshyong wrote: post #76

arbuge wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like a bicycle accident, not a motorbike accident.

Still, looks like a nasty injury. That's enough to make anyone ponder life

> Broke both elbows, lost a tooth & left a smear of my face on the road

That's an injury that will keep you in bed, giving you a moment to really look if you're collectively as a company making the best effort on solving the right product/market fit. Which he clearly couldn't find, nor roll off some of the law-firm tools they built I guess? But the actual law firm of lawyers they got together is still running which is good, so it's not a total loss, plus some money back to investors.

It's difficult to get proper perspective sometimes being a founder, you get mired in details and fantasy growth possibilities, and startup runners constantly need re-committing themselves for the tough fight going forward. It takes balls to finally admit defeat, especially with a solid track record.

So ultimately I wouldn't be surprised if this gave an opportunity to step back and take some perspective, while he's stuck in bed in recovery mode.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#80

Post by manigandham » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

notlukesky wrote: post #6

Let’s wait for the full autopsy but perhaps a better strategy would have been supplying tools and software to lawfirms, aggregating data and knowhow and then pivoting to an “automated” law firm as a service. But hindsight is always 20/20

That's what their pivot was 2 months ago, linked in the article: https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/13/atrium-layoffs/

Legal industry already has plenty of good tooling though. There's not much more to do here outside of automating the lawyers, and that won't happen.