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Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

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Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#161

Post by staticautomatic »

patentatt wrote: post #147
manigandham wrote: post #78

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 soft…

Disagree. I am pretty close to the Biglaw tech scene. While you’re correct that most firms would say they use all of those things, the actual implementation and execution isn’t there. It’s not even a nuanced critique, I mean maybe 1% of amlaw 100 revenue is even touched by anything in your list. There is a lot of work to be done, and great opportunity in the legal industry.

Agreed. For all their tech initiative claims and hiring of in-house "legal ops" people and even developers, your typical attorney uses hardly any legal tech outside of e-discovery or billing.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#162

Post by msword4ever »

kemitchell wrote: post #91
msword4ever wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perkins Coie. Well known clients include msft/uber. Bitcoin/cryptocurrency practice is well regarded. I think being close to a lot of tech clients helps. We get some flack for shunning slack/teams/gchat4business/stride/chime or wtf amazon uses/workplace by fb/etc and relying on “antiquated” email. We definitely prefer to work more in thoughtfully composed emails compared to a fluid team chat. It’s also easier to orga…

"Our clients depend on our ability to receive their messages reliably and respond efficiently. We can't settle for less than decentralized, asynchronous communications over standardized open protocols." Just be advised that if the prospect's head actually explodes, you may face capacity challenges to your engagement letter when you bill.

That’s a good way to phrase the advantages of email

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#163

Post by ev0lv »

Gorbzel wrote: post #137
kemitchell wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believed that law was a sluggish, tech-averse industry when I signed up to join it. But I don't see it living up to its tech-resistant reputation. It's very easy to blame the customer that way, when you have something to sell. As a lawyer, a coder, and legal toolmaker, I've been there. But my lived and observed experience of practice is that lawyers adopt what makes them competitive. As a result, they've often been…

Nice writeup. Too many startups and founders out there w/ no idea about the industry. Thus, excuses of the type you mention ("sluggish, tech-averse, etc") predominate over critical evaluation of the extremely sticky and complicated obstacles to new innovations in the legal tech space. That said, as a fellow lawyer, coder, and legal toolmaker, I'd posit there's more of a middle ground than you laid out: > It's easy to…

>>long live the billable hour

Such an interesting statement! What do you mean by it?

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#164

Post by msword4ever »

kemitchell wrote: post #90
gnicholas wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious to know what firms you’ve practiced at that weren’t tech-sluggish. Were they run by 55+ partners, or younger folks?

I'm a "transactional lawyer" who negotiates contracts, forms companies, handles regulatory issues, and advises on strategy. That's as opposed to a "litigator" who handles court cases. But I've actually seen practitioners outside my own specialty who've integrated newer technology much more deeply. Automated case assessment in some immigration practices, for example. In my experience, there is some correlation between…

The point about govt systems with clunky interfaces is a good one.

I think one area that we need to improve on is handling of PDFs. It's clearly the standard for documents of record. However, the fact it can be scanned images or text data is inconvenient.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#165

Post by xnyan »

gamblor956 wrote: post #112
eganist wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal is a notoriously sluggish industry, one that's almost infuriatingly incapable of adopting change and technology. Atrium's original pitch was exactly the opposite of what most legal teams are used to interacting with, and I can't think of a single biglaw attorney (sorry for the anecdote) who had faith in the idea or its execution. The original concept, as a reminder: https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/10/atrium-lega…

Law firms use cloud software extensively and, unlike FAANG or most tech startups, actually embrace remote work. I submit that law firms are actually far more progressive about technology than the tech world assumes, but are also a lot better at sniffing out bullshit software that doesn't provide a real-world benefit.

I hear this a lot, but like others are commenting, I also hear a lot about Windows XP boxes with word 03 setup w/ the macros they need running to this very day. I'd love to see something other than anecdata.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#166

Post by manigandham »

patentatt wrote: post #147
manigandham wrote: post #78

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 soft…

Disagree. I am pretty close to the Biglaw tech scene. While you’re correct that most firms would say they use all of those things, the actual implementation and execution isn’t there. It’s not even a nuanced critique, I mean maybe 1% of amlaw 100 revenue is even touched by anything in your list. There is a lot of work to be done, and great opportunity in the legal industry.

That's because humans are the main cost, like I said, and no amount of software is going to make them go any faster.

If there's really such a better execution to be had then Atrium was in the best place to find it. Yet it didnt.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#167

Post by [deleted] »

staticautomatic wrote: post #161
patentatt wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. I am pretty close to the Biglaw tech scene. While you’re correct that most firms would say they use all of those things, the actual implementation and execution isn’t there. It’s not even a nuanced critique, I mean maybe 1% of amlaw 100 revenue is even touched by anything in your list. There is a lot of work to be done, and great opportunity in the legal industry.

Agreed. For all their tech initiative claims and hiring of in-house "legal ops" people and even developers, your typical attorney uses hardly any legal tech outside of e-discovery or billing.

[deleted]

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#168

Post by manigandham »

staticautomatic wrote: post #161
patentatt wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. I am pretty close to the Biglaw tech scene. While you’re correct that most firms would say they use all of those things, the actual implementation and execution isn’t there. It’s not even a nuanced critique, I mean maybe 1% of amlaw 100 revenue is even touched by anything in your list. There is a lot of work to be done, and great opportunity in the legal industry.

Agreed. For all their tech initiative claims and hiring of in-house "legal ops" people and even developers, your typical attorney uses hardly any legal tech outside of e-discovery or billing.

What else does a typical attorney need to use that would make a meaningful difference?

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#169

Post by staticautomatic »

manigandham wrote: post #168
staticautomatic wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. For all their tech initiative claims and hiring of in-house "legal ops" people and even developers, your typical attorney uses hardly any legal tech outside of e-discovery or billing.

What else does a typical attorney need to use that would make a meaningful difference?

I can only speak for teams of attorneys, and my experience is mostly working with litigators rather than transactional lawyers, but among other things:

1) It's shockingly rare to see use of project management tools, even simple stuff like Basecamp or Notion. When multiple people need to, say, review a draft of a filing in sequence, they're typically either keeping track of it in their heads or in a spreadsheet. "Excel is totally adequate for this" is wrong for a variety of important reasons.

2) Infrequent use of file indexing, even Windows' built in. I see firms using document management software running old versions of SQL with totally the wrong kinds of indexes and which usually take forever to find anything or crash in the process.

3) If they exist I haven't seen them in use, but a lot of teams would benefit from some middle ground between nothing and e-discovery software for searching across relatively large but not enormous collections of documents. A rudimentary on-prem or local CRUD app that could ingest a variety of shit, OCR it if necessary, dump it into Elastic, and let you FTS it would probably sell like hotcakes to small and mid-sized firms.

Re: Atrium shuts down, laying off 100

#170

Post by correlator »

fastball wrote: post #149
correlator wrote: post #95

Another "AI" hammer looking for a nail to solve bites the dust. I hope those 100 employees land on their feet.

I dunno, I still think the legal industry is pretty ripe for some disruption.

I think it's ripe for useful tools. No need for disruption.
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