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Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

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Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#21

Post by heymijo »

duxup wrote: post #14
heymijo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to guess based on parsing these articles, Atrium went up against incentives in the legal industry and lost. [0,1] Legal firms bill hourly. Efficiency means less billable hours. (warning: moving into personal experience and conjecture) Yes, boilerplate forms for repetitive use cases seems like it should be a thing, but in my experience building businesses, every lawyer I have dealt with has found any reason p…

I wonder what the yin and yang in customer's minds are with "Thank goodness my law firm is saving me money by generating these documents for cheap!" And "You know this is kinda important but I'm not sure I want discount lawyer's on this who automate paperwork...."

Good question.

The asymmetries of the cost of improper legal work versus saving some amount upfront may not seem worth it.

There is probably some cognitive bias in play here.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#22

Post by patentatt »

duxup wrote: post #5

>Its goal was to improve on the traditional law firm model, by developing software to improve efficiency for both its attorneys and clients. Any word on what they actually were doing to gain these efficiencies?

They didn’t. If they had, they wouldn’t be ‘pivoting’ now.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#23

Post by anotherfounder »

https://www.atrium.co/inside-atrium/the-future-of-atrium/

For someone who has spent so much telling founders to cut buzzwords and speak in plain and simple English, this blog post by Justin Kan is something special. Case in point:

> Similarly, at Atrium, we’ve made the tough decision to restructure the company to accommodate growth into new business services through our existing professional services network.

Simple facts hidden in positive-sounding buzzwords, as if, they believe that the reader doesn't know better. It seems like a variation of 'Our incredible journey..' template

Honest question, why do companies do this? It seems disrespectful to everyone - employees (both fired and current), customers, and any adult for that matter.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#24

Post by mdotk »

orliesaurus wrote: post #11

so what exactly is Atrium now? A dev shop? tech tools it developed for lawyers and law firm clients, and for new areas it will expand into. This press-release feels was very shallow to me, can anyone explain?

Could NEVER understand what the heck they do and how they got $75M. Just sounded like they were a law firm specialising in start ups. Big whoop.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#25

Post by [deleted] »

anotherfounder wrote: post #23

https://www.atrium.co/inside-atrium/the-future-of-atrium/ For someone who has spent so much telling founders to cut buzzwords and speak in plain and simple English, this blog post by Justin Kan is something special. Case in point: > Similarly, at Atrium, we’ve made the tough decision to restructure the company to accommodate growth into new business services through our existing professional services network. Simple…

[deleted]

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#26

Post by birken »

tempsy wrote: post #18

I think anyone considering a job at a company founded by a serial entrepreneur should heed this as a warning. These founder raise pre product market fit because they can, and often raise too much money. Having too much money when you don’t really have a viable product that people want can easily turn your company into a zombie, where people are just sort of going through the motions because there’s nothing else to do…

I think it is a doubled edged sword. It was an audacious idea that made a lot of sense, and the fact that the founder could raise a lot of money based on name alone probably helped make the gamble on the audacious idea possible. If the startup could have reached escape velocity and be passed off to somebody else then I think you have the best of all worlds. Serial entrepreneur can shift to something else while the successful startup they helped create goes off on its own.

But I do agree with the second point, which is when the founder isn't going to have that "do or die" mentality and the startup starts to sputter, then it's straight into zombie land. Reading the blog post on the company website it sounds that this is basically a corporate structure for Justin Kan to give people advice on how to fundraise and build their companies, which might be a useful service but obviously not a growth startup.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#27

Post by woah »

My company used Atrium to help us think through some very complicated niche legal issues. We were on a flat rate plan, and it was nice to be able to brainstorm without watching the clock. We were pretty happy with their service, but it all came from one attorney, who also was the one who found us and brought us in. Whenever we dealt with anyone else there, it was disorganized and low quality. When our main attorney left, of course we followed them.

I had bought into their philosophy at first but the experience showed me why law firms have the partner-oriented structure they do. Legal work is built around trust in the lawyer in most cases and that's hard to automate.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#28

Post by aaavl2821 »

CalChris wrote: post #13
austenallred wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being willing to back a founder primarily based on who they are is absolutely a viable form of risk-taking.

It may be a viable form of risk-taking but then it isn't contrarian risk-taking. However, has anyone ever actually ran the numbers on serial founders, the entirety of the cohort and not just the success stories?

I believe first round did a study that showed that companies founded by people who'd previously had a successful exit had better outcomes, but they also raised at higher valuations, and those effects canceled each other. So returns from investing in successful serial founders vs new founders are similar

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#29

Post by [deleted] »

birken wrote: post #26
tempsy wrote: post #18

I think anyone considering a job at a company founded by a serial entrepreneur should heed this as a warning. These founder raise pre product market fit because they can, and often raise too much money. Having too much money when you don’t really have a viable product that people want can easily turn your company into a zombie, where people are just sort of going through the motions because there’s nothing else to do…

I think it is a doubled edged sword. It was an audacious idea that made a lot of sense, and the fact that the founder could raise a lot of money based on name alone probably helped make the gamble on the audacious idea possible. If the startup could have reached escape velocity and be passed off to somebody else then I think you have the best of all worlds. Serial entrepreneur can shift to something else while the su…

[deleted]

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#30

Post by [deleted] »

anotherfounder wrote: post #23

https://www.atrium.co/inside-atrium/the-future-of-atrium/ For someone who has spent so much telling founders to cut buzzwords and speak in plain and simple English, this blog post by Justin Kan is something special. Case in point: > Similarly, at Atrium, we’ve made the tough decision to restructure the company to accommodate growth into new business services through our existing professional services network. Simple…

[deleted]
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