Ask HN: Why are there so few law startups?

This is off on a tangent, but...

I just took a look at a demo video on your site - I'm just guessing based on appearances, but are you using CKEditor for your base editor, and then popping up a new window using the lite plugin to show tracked changes?

If so, we're using the same toolkit... but if not, I'd love to know if you found a better track changes project via open source, or if you rolled your own. The lite plugin works OK, but not well enough for some of our more legal-focused clientele, so I'm scoping out other options.

there are many excellent points made on this question but the standout one explaining the problem is >>When you're in a situation where mistakes can cost you millions, hiring an attorney for tailored advice is cheap insurance.

when you hire a corporate law firm you're paying for their liability insurance. Only products and services that can remove the fear if something goes wrong (i.e insurance) or what is the outcome does not stand up in law will really disrupt things. For the latter the government needs to be involved and this proposal in the UK will really shake things up for access to justice, costs etc if it goes ahead http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/feb/16/online-court-prop...

Do any law firms have a client site like for software project management?

I want something like redmine, where I can log in, and get a complete timeline and list of documents for a particular case. I should be able to upload anything the lawyers want.

I built and run DocketDaily (http://www.docketdaily.com). We mine and process litigation data which is used for a number of law-related purposes. As others have mentioned, Thomson and LexisNexis have the law firm market nearly locked down (for the time being, at least, as even this is changing), so we decided to target a slightly different space. We focus on legal vendors -- those selling into law firms and in-house counsel -- and provide them with very useful data and information for their sales/marketing efforts.

This strategy -- not targeting the law market head on -- has proved beneficial, and has allowed us to establish a base from which to expand to adjacent verticals (law firms, in-house counsel, legal recruiters, etc.)

We have a few competitors (Lex Machina, DocketNavigator, LawProspector, others) but they each tend to carve out a niche. In the case of Lex Machina and DocketNavigator, both are entirely focused on 1) law firms, and 2) patent litigation. It's a big world out there, and data in law is relatively young and nascent.

In any case, if anyone wants to discuss further, I'd be very happy to share learnings. I'm gene@ the website I mentioned earlier. If anyone is Cambridge/Boston based and interested in the law sector, I'd love to get together!

We are using CKEditor, but are not currently using lite. Our version compare is done separately using an HTML diff engine. We have a number of requests for redlining-as-you-type, which we don't currently do, and will probably implement that with lite when we get to that.

I have implemented it as a proof of concept twice now, but keep finding bugs and issues that block us from releasing it as a feature. Seems like you might be hitting some of those as well?

My recommendation would really come down to what issues your legal-focused clientele have with the current solution. If it's accuracy, storing each version in its entirety and comparing those versions is basically what lawyers do today with Word.