Abstract
How are the practice and business of law likely to be impacted by the rise of “legaltech”—the wide array of emerging technologies and innovative processes that are aimed at improving the delivery of legal services? This chapter focuses on one particular type of legal practice, the representation of venture-backed technology startup companies, as a useful case study for how legaltech is already making significant inroads in this arena and, further, how these technologies have the potential to change corporate and transactional lawyering more broadly in the future.
The chapter explores why startup lawyering makes for a revealing and instructive case study of legaltech’s future impact on the legal industry; assesses the current state of startup lawyering practices, including how and to what degree the status quo is already in flux due to emergent legaltech innovations; and considers the import for startup lawyers of several technological innovations that are on the horizon, including artificial intelligence, distributed ledger technologies and legal workflow solutions. The chapter concludes with predictions of how the emerging technologies discussed may alter the business models and practices of startup law firms.
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter, I use the term “legaltech” to refer not solely to technological solutions, per se, but also process and business model innovations, some but not all of which may rely on, or be enhanced by, new or existing technologies. See Abramowitz (2017).
- 2.
- 3.
This chapter focuses on U.S. startup law firms. I use the term “startup law firms” throughout the chapter to refer to large, established firms that have significant practices specializing in the representation of startup and emerging growth companies and venture capital (VC) investors. Most of the firms are based or have strong presences in major technology hubs such as Silicon Valley, New York and Boston. Representative examples of these startup law firms include: Cooley LLP; DLA Piper LLP; Fenwick & West LLP; Goodwin Procter LLP; Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian LLP; Latham & Watkins LLP; Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP; Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP; and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, P.C. See Chambers and Partners, Startups & Emerging Companies Nationwide Rankings, available at http://www.chambersandpartners.com/12788/2663/editorial/5/1. These firms are predominantly full-service, international law firms with attorneys working in a wide variety of practice areas and serving clients in various industries. In many cases, their startup and emerging companies practices make up a relatively small portion of the firms’ overall headcount and revenue. Despite my focus on the startup practices at these large firms, much of the discussion in this chapter will be applicable to smaller firms that represent startup companies, as well.
I also use the term “startup lawyer” to refer to the attorneys at these firms whose practices primarily focus on representing venture-backed startups and VC investors. Finally, I use the term “startup lawyering” to refer to the methods by which startup lawyers provide legal services to their startup clients throughout these companies’ lifecycles. For a detailed discussion of startup lawyering and how it differs from other types of corporate/transactional lawyering, see Coyle and Green (2017).
- 4.
During the period from July 2017 to April 2020, I formally interviewed 45 individuals and had many more informal conversations on the topics discussed in this chapter.
- 5.
See Garson (2013).
- 6.
See Aronson (2007), p. 831 n.28 (“Although trying to prove that lawyers are generally risk-averse might be futile in any case, there are a number of persuasive arguments.”); Henderson (2014), p. 16 (“[M]ost large law firms seem to be managed for the short-term benefit of individual rainmaking partners.”); Ribstein (2010), p. 813 (“[T]he problems of Big Law are not just a reflection of the current economic environment, but an indication of structural flaws in the large law firm as a mechanism for delivering legal services.”); Furlong (2013), Cohen (2018), Ambrogi (2018) and Poor (2017).
- 7.
See, e.g., Greenberg (2015) and Kluck (2018). I use the term “legaltech startups” to refer to emerging technology companies that are focusing on providing legaltech solutions. Many of the solutions described in this chapter are being created by legaltech startups. Many others, however, are offered by well-established legaltech companies, such as my former employer, Thomson Reuters, as well as Reed Elsevier (now RELX Group, which owns Lexis-Nexis), Bloomberg, and Wolters Kluwer. For a general discussion of legaltech startups, see Linna (2016).
- 8.
See, e.g., Flaherty (2017) (“There are few discernible differences between the modal in-house lawyer and the modal law-firm lawyer. They are the same people. Ultimately, they value the same thing: lawyering“). The rise of corporate legal operations and the professionalization of the corporate legal department is changing this dynamic, leading large company GCs to put more pressure on their outside law firms to change the way they deliver legal services”).
- 9.
Justin Kan, a highly successful serial entrepreneur and Y Combinator partner was so “frustrated by how little technology was being used in the process of interacting with various law firms” that he co-founded Atrium LTS, a now defunct legaltech startup (discussed later in this chapter), to compete with his old startup law firms. See Lawler (2017). As of October 2018, Atrium had raised more than $75 million in venture capital—a sum most legaltech startups can only dream of. See Constine (2018).
- 10.
See Coyle and Green (2014), pp. 1426–1427.
- 11.
In 2011, prominent VC Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures wrote a widely circulated blog post challenging startup law firms to be able to provide legal services for a startup’s incorporation and a simple seed preferred stock financing for a grand total of $5,000. See Wilson (2011). At the time, those same services typically ran legal fees of roughly between $20,000 and $30,000 (on the low end).
- 12.
See, e.g., LawGeex (2018) (“The more than $1 billion is distributed over more than 40 deals, compared to $233 million in investments in legaltech companies across 61 deals in 2017.”); Ambrogi (2019) and Cohen (2018) (“The smart money—and lots of it—is investing in legal technology companies including artificial intelligence (AI). During the past half-decade, more than three-quarters of a billion dollars has been pumped into U.S.-based ‘legal tech,’ and there’s no sign of a let-up.”); see also Curle (2016) (“In recent years, the number of lawyers and technologists combining forces to develop new legal products has exploded.”). The Stanford CodeX Center for Legal Informatics has created an index of legaltech companies that lists more than 1300 companies as of May 2020. See Total Number of Companies, Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, available at http://techindex.law.stanford.edu/statistics.
- 13.
See Ward (2017).
- 14.
See FINSMES (2015) eShares Raises Series A Funding, available at http://www.finsmes.com/2015/01/eshares-raises-series-a-funding.html.
- 15.
See Wilson (2015).
- 16.
See Loizos (2015) and Roof (2017).
A more recent example of this phenomenon in the startup legaltech space is the case of Anduin (http://www.anduintransact.com/), a project management and collaboration platform for startup venture financings. Anduin shares a co-founder with the Silicon Valley venture capital firm 8VC (http://8vc.com) and has been able to drive some adoption and receive product feedback using that connection by having 8VC encourage counterparties on its deals to try the platform.
Similarly, Clerky (http://www.clerky.com/), a document automation and workflow platform focused on startup formations and early-stage financings, has leveraged its relationship as a portfolio company of the premier startup accelerator Y Combinator to become the go-to legaltech solution for new participants in Y Combinator’s accelerator programs. See Rao (2013) (“Y Combinator has been using Clerky in stealth for three full batches with over 100 startups incorporated using the service.”).
- 17.
- 18.
- 19.
For example, in my practice, I often had to remind startup founders to open a bank account for the company well in advance of closing their first financing so that investors would be able to wire funds to the company on the closing day. This advice was obviously not legal in nature but rather stemmed from my greater experience with these transactions than my clients had.
- 20.
It is common in early-stage deals for angel investors and even some venture capital investors to proceed without hiring their own counsel, meaning that the company’s lawyers are the only attorneys involved in the transaction.
- 21.
For another description of the low-tech nature of the startup transaction documentation process, see Juetten (2017).
- 22.
Mark Cohen has argued that technology actually “liberates lawyers to perform essential tasks—engage with clients, exercise professional judgment, provide counsel (not just legal matters but more holistically) and negotiate key commercial transactions. Law, like medicine and other professional services, is undergoing a ‘back to the future’ process. And that process places a premium on emotional intelligence (a/k/a ‘EQ’ or ‘people skills).” See Cohen (2017a). For a discussion distinguishing between tasks that are susceptible to automation and higher value work, see Jesuthasan and Boudreau (2019) (“Repetitive work is often predictable, routine, and determined by predefined criteria while more variable work is unpredictable, changing, and requiring adaptive criteria and decision rules.”).
- 23.
Front-end and back-end are terms typically used in the software engineering context. Front-end refers to “a software interface (such as a graphical user interface) designed to enable user-friendly interaction with a computer.” See Merriam-Webster, available at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/front-end. Back-end, conversely, refers to “the part of a computer system or application that is not directly accessed by the user, typically responsible for storing and manipulating data.” See Oxford Dictionaries, available at http://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/back_end. As a former colleague succinctly described it to me once, in the Internet world, front-end is software that runs in the browser, and back end is software that runs on a server.
- 24.
Examples of this approach include Morrison & Foerster’s MOFO ScaleUp (http://scaleup.mofo.com/) and Mintz Levin’s MintzEdge (http://mintzedge.com).
- 25.
- 26.
See Taku (2009). Wilson’s Term Sheet Generator (http://www.wsgr.com/WSGR/Display.aspx?SectionName=practice%2Ftermsheet.htm) is powered by Contract Express document automation technology. Contract Express was acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2015. See Ambrogi (2015).
- 27.
Other examples of firms that have followed or expanded upon Wilson’s Term Sheet Generator include: Goodwin Procter’s Founders Workbench (http://www.foundersworkbench.com/document-driver), Cooley’s CooleyGo (http://www.cooleygo.com), Perkins Coie’s Startup PerColator (http://www.startuppercolator.com), Latham and Watkins’ LathamDrive, (http://www.lathamdrive.com), WilmerHale’s LAUNCH (http://launch.wilmerhale.com), DLA’s DRAFT (http://www.dlapiper.com/en/us/focus/draft), and Reed Smith’s RStart (http://www.rstart.com), each with Contract Express integration; and Orrick’s Tool Kit Term Sheet Creator, with HotDocs integration (http://www.orrick.com/Total-Access/Tool-Kit/Term-Sheet-Creator).
- 28.
One firm I spoke with has been using its own proprietary cap table management software, developed in-house, for most of the last decade. The software is only used by the firm’s startup lawyers internally as they input information related to share issuances/transfers and stock option activity. When attorneys need to share the cap table information externally with clients or third parties (such as investors or opposing counsel), they export the information into an Excel spreadsheet, which is then circulated.
- 29.
See Solium, http://solium.com/shareworks. In February 2019, Morgan Stanley announced that it would acquire Solium for $900 million. See Hoffman (2019). At the time of the acquisition, Solium reportedly had 3000 corporate clients that employed more than one million people, collectively. Id.
- 30.
See Carta, http://carta.com.
- 31.
See, e.g., Fenwick and West (2017), Goodwin Procter (2016) and Epstein (2016). Despite these public partnerships with electronic cap table platform providers, some startup law firms are still maintaining shadow cap tables in Excel due to perceived limitations of the cap table management software or to comply with internal policies around giving capitalization opinions in connection with venture financings.
- 32.
See Docusign, http://www.docusign.com. Other e-signature tools popular among startup law firms and their clients include HelloSign (http://www.hellosign.com) and Adobe Sign (http://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/sign.html), formerly EchoSign. HelloSign, which offers some document workflow solutions in addition to e-signature functionality was acquired by Dropbox in 2019, leading to the prospect of integrating those features with a popular cloud storage platform. See Miller (2019).
- 33.
See Doxly (http://doxly.com) (acquired by Litera Microsystems in August 2019, shortly following Litera’s acquisition of Workshare, whose Workshare Compare is the most common document comparison tool among startup law firms); Closing Folders (http://www.closingfolders.com); and Simply Agree (http://simplyagree.com). In August 2019, Wilson Sonsini announced that it would be using Doxly (which was founded by one of the firm’s alumnae) to automate the signing and closing process for its entire startup practice. See Tromans (2019f).
- 34.
The document management system of choice for firms in this space is iManage (http://imanage.com). Several firms reported, however, that they were actively considering alternatives such as NetDocuments (http://www.netdocuments.com). In May 2019, Wilson Sonsini announced that it moved from iManage to NetDocuments. See Hill (2019).
- 35.
A “freemium“ business model describes “a way of charging for a product or service in which the basic product or service is free, but the customer pays for extra features.” See Cambridge English Dictionary, available at http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/freemium.
- 36.
See Bohlen (2017).
- 37.
For an overview of machine learning, see Goodfellow et al. (2016).
- 38.
See, e.g., Catalyst (2017) (“eDiscovery is effectively ground zero for today’s exploding use of AI in law.”); Lohr (2017) (“Artificial intelligence has stirred great interest, but law firms today are using it mainly in ‘search-and-find type tasks’ in electronic discovery, due diligence and contract review”).
- 39.
See Ambrogi (2017c), Patrice (2018) and Tromans (2019b). RAVN’s main competitor in the contract review space, Kira Systems, has worked on similar efforts partnering with document management and workflow solutions provider HighQ (http://highq.com) (acquired by Thomson Reuters in July 2019) and expert system tool Neota Logic. See Tromans (2017).
- 40.
See Kira Systems, http://kirasystems.com. Luminance (http://www.luminance.com/) and eBrevia (http://ebrevia.com) are other legaltech companies competing with RAVN and Kira in the AI contract review space. In December 2018, eBrevia was acquired by RR Donnelley, which is a major player in the virtual dataroom space. See Tromans (2018a).
- 41.
See Ambrogi (2017a).
- 42.
- 43.
Id. at 4. eBrevia said they “have found that time savings are even better on subsequent projects when teams get more comfortable working in a system and are also able to benefit from models that they train specific to their contract sets.” Id.
- 44.
See Tromans (2018b).
- 45.
Id.
- 46.
See, e.g., Cohen (2017a) (“Companies like LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer make legal services more accessible and affordable to those that cannot pay current high legal rates. They utilize technology and process to offer ‘self-help’ documents that are professionally vetted, easily accessible, cost-effective, and sufficient in most instances.”)
- 47.
See Barton (2015), p. 88 (“LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer, among others, have already begun to encroach upon, and may eventually cripple, the business of solo and small-firm practitioners.”). LegalZoom (http://www.legalzoom.com) has generally been viewed among startup law firms as more of a threat to solo lawyers and general practitioners representing small business who rely more heavily on this type of work as a source of revenue than the startup law firms do.
- 48.
See Barton (2015), p. 90 (“LegalZoom is the classic Christensen disruptive technology—it started by servicing the lowest-margin part of the market and has gradually inched its way up.”). Examples, in addition to LegalZoom, of competitors in this space that are moving up the food chain include Google-owned Rocket Lawyer (http://www.rocketlawyer.com), Stripe’s Atlas (http://stripe.com/atlas) and a slew of legaltech startups such as Clerky, Shoobx (http://www.shoobx.com), Clara (http://www.clara.co/), Gust (http://gust.com), Docasaurus (http://www.docasaurus.com), and Valcu (http://valcu.co).
- 49.
Barton (2015), p. 96.
- 50.
Id. See Barton (2015), p. 78 (“Over time any work that can be routinized and commoditized will be, and over time that work will either be done much more cheaply by Big Law or, more likely, will drift to other providers.”).
- 51.
See Fenwick Labs, http://www.fenwick.com/about/Pages/fenwick-labs.aspx.
- 52.
Id. See also Dipshan (2018a).
- 53.
See Orrick (2017).
- 54.
See Dipshan (2018).
- 55.
- 56.
For a discussion of different types of innovations, see Christensen (1997) at sec. 180–97.
- 57.
See Susskind (2017), pp. 43–55 (describing different types of emerging legal technologies).
- 58.
See Klein (2015).
- 59.
See Barton (2015), p. 82 (“Even in complex areas, a mix of statistical analysis and human ingenuity is likely to triumph over humans alone, suggesting that Big Law should be working harder on computerization and data analysis.”). One startup law firm that is ahead of the curve in this area, Fenwick & West, has used Kira’s AI contract extraction tools to compile internal and external market survey publications, “resulting in efficiency gains and greater output quality. Using Kira, Fenwick has saved hundreds of hours for lawyers and staff that were previously spent producing survey publications.” See Tromans (2018b).
- 60.
- 61.
AI contract review companies and other legaltech companies already appear to be working on these types of solutions. See, e.g., supra note 39.
- 62.
See Susskind (2017), pp. 54–55,187 (discussing AI-enabled legal question answering).
- 63.
See id. at 185.
- 64.
See, e.g., Cohen (2019).
For a general description of blockchain technology, see De Filippi and Wright (2018), p. 13 (“At their core, blockchains are decentralized databases, maintained by a distributed network of computers. They blend together a variety of different technologies—including peer-to-peer networks, public-private key cryptography, and consensus mechanisms—to create a novel type of database.”). See also Werbach (2018), Yaga et al. (2018).
- 65.
Blockchain-enabled contracts are often referred to as “smart contracts.” See Rohr and Wright (2019) (“Smart contracts are a new type of computer program that can be designed to operate autonomously from a centralized operator. This means that unlike today’s computer programs—which are executed by individuals or intermediaries, like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft—multiple members of the Ethereum network independently run a smart contract’s code when triggered, using Ethereum’s blockchain to access the code and record interactions with the program. Once saved in the Ethereum blockchain, no single party can stop others from using the smart contract (unless specifically provided for in the underlying code), and no single party can stop the execution of the smart contract once running. Due to these characteristics, smart contracts act, in a sense, as autonomous electronic agents for parties seeking to engage in economic or social activity online.”).
- 66.
For a detailed discussion of token sales and how they are regulated, see Rohr and Wright (2019).
- 67.
- 68.
- 69.
See Geron (2017) (“This year, more capital was raised from ICOs, as of August, than from earliest-stage venture capital, according to a recent Goldman Sachs report.”).
- 70.
- 71.
- 72.
See OpenLaw (2017). Clause (http://clause.io) and SmartContract (http://www.smartcontract.com) are examples of other legaltech startups competing in this space.
In September 2018, Open Law announced a partnership with Rocket Lawyer to create blockchain-based applications, and less than 2 weeks later, Clause announced a similar partnership with LegalZoom to bring smart contract functionality to its platform. See Tromans (2018c) and Dipshan (2018b). Clause has also integrated with DocuSign (which invested in the startup’s Series A financing round) enabling a smart contract to be automatically triggered to run on a blockchain protocol upon execution of an agreement in DocuSign. See Tromans (2019c).
In 2019, Thomson Reuters announced a proof of concept in which a Practical Law form of promissory note automated with Contract Express was able to include smart contract elements for the payment provisions. OpenLaw served as the smart contract execution layer mediating the interaction of the smart contract generated in Contract Express with the Ethereum blockchain. See Tromans (2019d).
- 73.
Many of the proponents of blockchain technology with whom I spoke argued convincingly that providing a highly tamper-resistant, resilient historical record of transactions where everyone has a shared view of the truth across a distributed, decentralized network will increasingly draw more types of assets to have their ownership recorded in some form on blockchains.
- 74.
In favor of more holistic thinking in legaltech, Bob Ambrogi has argued “that, in developing products for the legal market, companies should be mindful of the entirety of a lawyer’s workflow.” See Ambrogi (2017b).
Similarly, Jae Um has argued that legaltech stakeholders need to move beyond the ever-expanding array of point solutions in the marketplace toward interoperability and systems thinking. See Um (2019) (“[W]e have too many teams working in silos on similar problems. The result is a proliferation of point solutions that favor speed and expediency in solving discrete problems in isolation over deep analysis of root causes, interdependencies, or second-order impacts on system integrity.” (author’s emphasis)).
- 75.
See generally Lockwood (2009). According to Rochael Andranly, General Counsel and Legal Design Lead at IDEO, “design thinking is an approach to problem-solving that begins and ends with a laser focus on the needs of the people you’re designing for. The beauty of the approach is its emphasis on people—human-centered, in design thinking parlance.” See Ors (2017).
- 76.
- 77.
Id.
- 78.
Seyfarth Shaw (2017a).
- 79.
Id.
- 80.
See Seyfarth Shaw (2017c).
- 81.
See Seyfarth Shaw (2017b).
- 82.
This type of information will be provided by integrating the LPM platforms with back-office software such as the firm’s accounting and billing systems so that the information in those systems can provide real-time insights to the attorneys that are actively managing client matters.
- 83.
Legaltech providers competing in the contract lifecycle space include companies such as Apttus (http://apttus.com), Concord (http://www.concordnow.com), Synergist (http://synergist.io/) and Ironclad (http://www.ironcladapp.com). Docusign is also moving beyond e-signatures to compete in the contract lifecycle management space with its recent acquisition of Spring CM. See Docusign (2018). Many startups are already using these types of contract management solutions for their commercial contracting based on forms that have been created by their startup lawyers. However, it is less common for these solutions to be used in transactions where the law firms are involved in the negotiation process.
- 84.
See Barton (2015), p. 84 (“Savvy lawyers will combine their expertise with data and number crunching to improve performance.”).
- 85.
Some startup law firms have expanded the scope of their knowledge management function beyond this traditional role by tasking KM professionals with process and technology integration, as well. See, e.g., Reynolds (2017).
- 86.
See generally, Reiser and Dempsey (2018). The field, which is sometimes also known as instructional design and technology, instructional technology or educational technology, “encompasses the analysis of learning and performance problems, and the design development, implementation, evaluation and management of instructional and non-instructional processes and resources intended to improve learning and performance in a variety of settings, particularly educational institutions and the workplace.” Reiser and Dempsey (2018), pp. 4–5.
- 87.
Rosenberg (2018), p. 133.
- 88.
Id. at 136.
- 89.
- 90.
Thomson Reuters recently took two significant steps in this direction with the release of a new product called Panoramic (http://www.elite.com/panoramic/) and the acquisition of HighQ (see Hill 2019). Panoramic combines historical and current billing data from a firm’s back-office practice management software (Thomson Reuters Elite, in this case); tools for staffing, budgeting, and managing client matters; and customizable matter maps (incorporating Practical Law know-how) delivered at the point of need. The combination of these features into an integrated platform may enable more thoughtful scoping, pricing and consistent execution of legal matters. See O’Grady (2019), LegalITInsider (2019) and Tromans (2019e).
- 91.
These stakeholders should include (at a minimum): startup founders (and eventually, as the companies grow, their in-house lawyers); law firms, from senior partners down to junior associates and paralegals; startup investors, such as angel investors and venture capitalists; and potentially other parties with whom startups regularly enter into contracts.
- 92.
There are a number of other platforms that compete with overlapping portions of the Shoobx platform, including: Carta (formerly eShares); Solium Shareworks (formerly CapMx); Clerky (founded by former Orrick lawyers); Docasaurus and Valcu (each founded by a former Gunderson lawyer); Doxly (founded by a former Wilson Sonsini lawyer); SimplyAgree (founded by a former Baker Donelson startup lawyer); Anduin; Stripe Atlas; and Closing Folders. Gust is another suite of platforms, created by angel investor David S. Rose, but unlike the previously mentioned platforms, its focus is on providing self-service solutions to startups, not platforms through which they are meant to interact with their lawyers. Gust also includes services not offered by these other platforms, such as facilitating applications to accelerators and crowdfunding capital from angel investment groups, as well as some accounting integrations that none of the other platforms provide.
- 93.
See Goodwin Procter (2016).
- 94.
While Shoobx spent significant time on process mapping when designing the platform, some users I spoke with (who were not at the firms that Shoobx partnered with while building the product) expressed frustration with the inability to alter the workflows within the platform to better match their own processes. Many startup law firms are thus finding themselves facing a choice when considering whether to start practicing within a legaltech platform: maintain the status quo or give up some of their ability to use their own forms and processes in order to take advantage of the efficiencies they may gain by using a platform such as Shoobx.
- 95.
See Atrium, http://www.atrium.co. For a post-mortem on Atrium, see Constine (2020).
- 96.
Atrium was not the first legaltech company to use this type of dual-entity structure to avoid running afoul of rules prohibiting the unlicensed practice of law. Clearspire, which was also shuttered in 2014 after 4 years in existence, was structured similarly. See Ambrogi (2017d). For a comparison of Atrium and Clearspire, see Moyse (2017).
- 97.
Atrium LLP lawyers were initially expected to spend 20% of their time working on the product and process innovations that Atrium LTS was creating and implementing at the law firm. See Borstein (2017).
- 98.
58% of all DocuSign transactions stem from other applications that have integrated DocuSign functionality into their offerings. See Chapman (2017).
- 99.
In the legaltech world, more generally, there has been a recent movement to create platforms that function like “app stores” for legaltech point solutions. In August 2019, Reynen Court (http://reynencourt.com/) officially launched its long-anticipated platform that will allow law firms to pick and choose among pre-vetted third-party legaltech applications that have met the firms’ security standards. See Nair and Warren (2019). The project is supported by a consortium of more than a dozen top global law firms. See Hill (2019).
A similar venture called Legal Tech Store recently launched in France. See Tromans (2019a).
While Reynen Court’s website says that it plans “to accelerate inter-operability between and among legal technology applications,” it does not appear to be building an overarching, integrated workflow platform along the lines of the dashboard approach I have outlined above (at least, not yet).
- 100.
See Susskind (2017), pp. 133–145.
- 101.
See id. For a discussion regarding a recent trend of law firms hiring professional inside sales teams, see Coulter (2019) and Schiappacasse (2019). One of the more innovative features of Atrium before it shuttered was that they had built up professional, dedicated sales and account management functions instead of largely relying on attorneys to handle those functions as most startup law firm do.
- 102.
See, e.g., Baker (2010) and Press (2017); but see Furlong (2017). The death of the billable hour has been proclaimed time and again, but it has proven remarkably resilient. See Pardau (2013), p. 18 (“At the future’s successful firms, the lawyer’s hour will go further, and questions about the impediment that traditional billable hour regimes pose for this goal are justified. Nevertheless, no wholesale alternative has emerged to date, and the billable hour, even as it has always been known, is proving resilient.”). However, e-billing software is now becoming fairly ubiquitous and increasingly powerful by harnessing AI. Soon, even early-stage startups may be negotiating their legal bills in a manner as sophisticated as large corporate GCs, adding to the pressure on the billable hour as a sustainable pricing framework with these smaller clients.
Atrium experimented with different pricing models, such as a monthly membership program, for delivering legal services to startups. See Chafkin (2019) (“For $500 a month, clients get access to a corporate lawyer—Atrium has its own legal team, hired from the big firms and matching their standardized salaries—free initial consultations on new projects, and a software platform that automates simple tasks such as drafting an offer letter or a nondisclosure agreement.”). However, keeping the same cost structure as the big startup firms they were competing against while adopting a new revenue model was one factor that may have contributed to its demise. See Constine (2020) (“[K]eeping a large squad of lawyers on staff proved costly. Atrium priced packages of its software and legal assistance under subscriptions, with momentous deals like acquisitions incurring add-on fees. The model relied less on milking clients with steep hourly rates measured down to six-minute increments like most law firms.”)
- 103.
- 104.
- 105.
See Green (2017).
In a similar vein, the international law firm Dentons launched NextLaw Labs in 2015 to be “a global collaborative innovation platform focused on developing, deploying, and investing in new technologies and processes to transform the practice of law around the world.” Dentons (2015). In 2019, Dentons created an innovation acceleration program to incentivize and “drive further innovation thought leadership and engagement among associate lawyers and non-lawyer professionals in the creation and promotion of novel solutions to business processes.” Dentons (2019).
- 106.
See supra note 95.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the dozens of professionals from across the legal industry who so generously took time to speak with me and share their experiences and insights as I researched this chapter. I would also like to thank everyone who provided thoughtful comments on previous drafts of this chapter, especially the scholars at the 2019 Law and Entrepreneurship Association annual meeting. Finally, I would like to thank the editors of this volume and their institutions for commissioning and compiling this work on such a vital topic.
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Green, J.M. (2021). Legaltech and the Future of Startup Lawyering. In: Masson, A., Robinson, G. (eds) Mapping Legal Innovation . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47447-8_9
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