The phrase
"legal startups" refers to new companies or businesses that provide legal services or create innovative solutions for the legal industry.
Full definition
Yet at the same time — and perhaps as a consequence — the market
for legal startups is booming.
We had a great group of speakers in addition to
top legal startups pitch in front of a panel of expert judges.
I was fortunate to attend some amazing discussions on the future of legal services and to see new products and offerings
from legal startups.
With so many
legal startups emerging, the internet and technology are replacing many of the basic legal services lawyers used to provide.
There are no sponsors for this event,
just legal startups getting together and having some drinks to celebrate a great year and share stories.
Looking back at my previous post, I was searching for a correlation between the creation of
legal startups vs economic events.
Our talk covered the origins of his company, the evolution of his product, his thoughts on the legal marketplace, his advice
for legal startups, and even his current reading list.
Also, until recently there has been little investment
in legal startups and innovations.
Most legal startups have difficulty raising capital because of the unknown market and the long turnaround time required for product development and launch.
Fast Company writer Sean Captain picks up on recent posts of mine
about legal startups (here and here) and goes in deeper, looking at three of the startups leading the charge: Casetext, Lex Machina, PacerPro and Ravel Law.
A whopping $ 458 million was invested
into legal startups last year, a remarkable increase from the $ 66 million that went into the space in 2012.
I believed I would know it when I see it, even when camouflaged and hidden in the 912 +
legal startups on Angel.co or anywhere else.
On March 13, 2017, I wrote a post about the startup LawTova, with the headline,
Legal Startup Appears to Shut Down After I Question Its Management.
And on June 14 at Legaltech, Bluford will be featured alongside two
other legal startups in a Legal Innovation Lightning Round produced by The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics (CodeX) and the Center for Legal Innovation at Vermont Law School and judged by CodeX fellows Monica Bay and Nicole Shanahan.
There are countless other examples of millennial - helmed
legal startups trying to fix the industry's pain points.
Take a look at the list of
legal startups at Angel List, a site that lists startups of all kinds.
It
supports legal startups, R & D for law firms, businesses, organizations and government, and practical reform initiatives.
As it turns out, one of the most exciting places to hear about and see innovations in a short period of time was at the panels put on by Stanford CodeX presenting thoughts on the future of legal and
legal startups who introduced their products.
In this issue of Lawyers We Love, we spoke with Vincent Morris at Arkansas» innovative
legal startup Open Access Law Firm.
While charting 912
+ legal startups I wrote: «I did not spot a unicorn... yet ``.
Now to compete with LegalZoom and RocketLawyer are a collection of
legal startups offering the ability to assemble your own case.
Josh Kubicki reported that
legal startup funding is at an estimated $ 77 million year to date with the prediction that it will be much higher than the $ 458 million invested in 2013.
Meanwhile, expect more tech
empowered legal startups, in part because the brake on recruitment and training of law graduates by BigLaw will create an alternative flow of micro-competitors acting like digital termites on the traditional staffing and fees pyramids.
Which brings us to the
latest legal startup, CrowdJustice, a crowdfunding platform allowing ordinary citizens to fund public - interest litigation.
And, whilst access to funding and investment for
legal startups needs a Slaw article all of its own, there are simple examples from outside of our industry that would be easier to emulate.
In looking at this year's International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) attendance list, I saw lots of legal professionals from well - known and well - heeled law firms, a big group of big tech vendors, a
few legal startups, and very few practicing lawyers.
EVERLAW
A Legal Startup Review Everlaw has been making electronic discovery (ediscovery) look easy for 5 years.
By giving both individual and corporate consumers the resources to do it yourself, today's crop of
disruptive legal startups is laying the groundwork for an era in which software tools, social sharing and document comparison - assembly programs are positioned to replace attorneys» stock in trade, namely reuse of contracts and other legal «forms.»
As I observed in a 2013 DisCo piece, like taxi - hailing companies Uber and Sidecar,
legal startups face serious opposition from incumbents who are well - situated to employ archaic regulatory regimes to thwart new entry.
If you are deciding between a c - corp and an LLC for your company, read
Priori Legal startup attorney Mark Koffsky's post.
The result is an explosion (relatively speaking) of
legal startups over the last six or seven years.
There now appear to be more than twenty legal hacking, technology, or innovation groups meeting regularly and hosting legal hacking,
legal startup showcases, or similar events: (Source Legal Informatics Blog)
A legal renaissance has emerged with
legal startups like Docket Alarm, a legal research tool that processes full - text searches across lawsuits and producing analytics and predictions.