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Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup

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61–70 of 102 posts

Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup

#61
post #11

This is awesome and I'm really happy to see venture dollars being spent on the legal industry. One of my gripes has always been that quality legal is traditionally expensive to obtain because the "quality" part in legal work tends to come from literally practicing law for a long time and knowledge about many things quite deeply. Over time law firms obviously grow in standing and therefore size, increasing costs. This…

I don't think much legal cost is in research, industry-wide. Most lawyers specialize in one niche and already know all the relevant big cases in their field. More nuanced research isn't all that time consuming really. And a whole big swath of legal work has absolutely nothing to do with researching law, there's a lot more to it. And a huge part of society doesn't need super-experienced lawyers. The under served market needs warm bodies who are qualified to represent clients at some state bar who are willing to work for peanuts. Like, just someone to sit there in a suit and look menacing would help out most of the 'under served.' Large student loans require law school grads to seek the highest paying work possible, thought, so lawyers can't represent poor people.

Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup

#62
post #39

I built a legal app years ago. One problem I had getting investors is that the legal market is so small. Microsoft dropped it as a vertical years ago. Corporate law is even a smaller segment of the legal industry. VC law is an even smaller segment of corporate law. How big is the market for this product? Edit: I see from their website they claim it is a "$96 billion industry". There are only 1.3 million active lawyer…

If each of the lawyers makes 100k per year you already have a $100 billion industry.

It is a lawyer's fees industry's size, not a legal software industry's size..

Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup

#64
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If each of the lawyers makes 100k per year you already have a $100 billion industry.

How much of that do they spend on software?

As little as possible. Software is a cost center to law firms.

Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup

#65
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reading between the lines, it looks like that's what's being attempted I'm guessing getting it adopted, you need to acquire large corporate clients who want to demand this sort of accountability from law firms they hire, more than acquiring the law firms as clients

Do lawyers usually send very detailed itemized bills?

Yes

Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup

#66
post #62
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If each of the lawyers makes 100k per year you already have a $100 billion industry.

It is a lawyer's fees industry's size, not a legal software industry's size..

Fair enough. I have no idea how industry sizes are calculated. I always think they are made up numbers anyway.

In any case, an industry where 1.3 million highly paid people work should be a worthwhile market to pursue.

Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup

#67
> And while Kan is still loathe to go into all the details...

> Kan promises more to come — including more details about the tech the company is building and how it will begin offering that technology to customers...

I like how the only specific details about the company is an alphabetical listing of every single person who invested in it, and then another couple paragraphs explaining to us why that list is somehow meaningful.

I wonder where people get the idea that "funding isn't a goal"...

Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup

#69
post #41
post #7

Hello HN! We are excited to be building in the legal space. Raising money is a necessary step, but Atrium LTS' biggest accomplishment so far is the great team of experts we have assembled here. My cofounders are Augie Rakow (former partner at Orrick, where he worked on over 100 financings and represented Cruise through their acquisition to GM), BeBe Chueh (lawyer turned founder who sold her last company to LegalZoom)…

Are you still working on Whale? Also, what's going on with Zero-F? https://zero-f.co/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/06/just-kan-zero-f/

My cofounder Ranidu runs Whale and we have a great team there.

I was originally intending to incubate more companies but have decided to focus on Atrium LTS as I think it is a huge opportunity.

Re: Justin Kan Raises $10M for New Legal Startup

#70
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can attest that there are many technology-related things that would make lawyers more efficient. I think that's true, but I also think that these "technology-related things" are things that do not exist. Take your example: Windows has not improved in any way that is relevant to lawyers since Windows 2000. What is the point of upgrading? I see many things in my practice where I could see technology making things m…

I can vouch for the fact that legal technology as a category does not address the needs of lawyers. And which is obvious to most practicing attorneys. As an example: > "spend less time [billing] on research" is not, and never will be, an effective value proposition; and which would be obvious to anyone in anything but the most niche putt-putt fields of practice. Rayiner is of course authority enough on this subject q…

Lots of these comments ended up focusing on research, which applies heavily in litigation but hardly at all in transactional work. Justin confirmed in response to my other comment that their initial market is transactional, so perhaps what they have in mind is somewhat different (related to managing various transactional flows, like fundraising, M/A, etc.)
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