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Comment by justin | Hacker News Reader

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) and Chris Smoak (Amazon AWS, multiple time YC founder, founder of early FB payments platform Gambit). I think our early team is doing a great job of moving quickly and we are looking for more talented people to join that team.

Read more here: http://www.atriumlts.com

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Good to hear of this fine effort. For the most part, if law were a person, you would say it is incorrigible when it comes to being tamed for efficiencies. It remains a guild system, which severely limits who can perform legal services and how they can be performed. It also remains an apprenticeship system by which personalized and customized services by highly-trained specialists remains the norm and is perennially tied to the billable hour, which can sometimes inject perverse incentives for law firms to stay with technologically outmoded systems that nonetheless yield higher billings. It embraces vast and amorphous technical areas that can bewilder all concerned with their complexity and, even in simpler areas, it can set unsuspecting clients up for being blindsided when they (at times) ignorantly assume that something is standard or routine when it is not. So quality lawyers can and do earn their keep but often at a stiff cost to the client. That part of the system is intractable and, in my view, there is little any technological provider can do to effect systemic changes to limit costs relating to that core aspect of the legal business. That said, the means by which lawyers (and other timekeepers) work can be vastly improved from the stone-age systems one can all too easily encounter in today's legal field. I note that Atrium LTS is (from its website) "dedicated to providing exceptional tools and processes to transform the delivery of corporate legal services" (italics are mine). That mission statement is spot on. Work around the incorrigible and intractable areas, focus on mechanisms and process, and limit the substantive field to those in which you can take regular and recurring transactions and inject massive efficiencies into the doddering or sclerotic systems now in place. Doing this is not easy. Indeed, it is a massively difficult undertaking. But, put together top people who know the problems, add seasoned technologists who can develop the right systems, and give it the backing of serious investors who have the wherewithal to fund a disruption of major industries, and you have the makings of a great opportunity. Good lawyers will not resist this. They will welcome it because it enhances the value of the customized work that is in reality what they sell. Moreover, it is definitely an idea whose time has come. Others who are highly credible are trying to do this as well, from different angles (e.g., Clerky) and, from the standpoint of one who has long labored in this field, it is exciting to envision what will come of such efforts. Very exciting to see it happening.

Last year I sold my interest in a startup with a patent application for SLAP (Statutory Litigation Automated Pricing) we partnered with law firms and were consumer facing automating law firm fee calculation and hiring online. After that I worked with Walmart to develop a "self serve legal kiosk" for use in Walmart stores with another vendor.

At some point with the former project I was in talks with both legalzoom and Avvo, but I was never able to close a mutually beneficial deal and was eventually acquired.

I've always been a legal maverick, graduating early from law school and simultaneously completing 3 legal clinics including a externiship/judicial clerkship. Generally, I'm a workhorse, having ran 27 half marathons last month. I checked the jobs and it doesn't look like your team is searching, but I would be interested in talking if your team could use extra legal talent for developing firm tools.

I'm a workhorse, having ran 27 half marathons last month.

Sorry for the off topic question, but... whoa. Can you talk briefly about how this works?

I have a friend who runs marathons and practice runs are generally 10-20 miles a day, most days of the week. So a 13 mile run is just a regular workout but with friends.

Just a random goal I gave myself (to do 31 consecutive actually) pretty cool experience because for the most part I ran with "Raven", a streak runner who has run 8 miles on south beach every day for 42+ years. [1] Obviously a guy who has run 124,000 miles (nearly 5x around earth or to the moon and back), through pain, through hurricanes, etc... is pretty inspirational. I ran 5-6 miles on the boardwalk on my own before the Raven Run usually having a peanut or almond butter sandwich and water between. I run for fun but that mileage is 3x the month before, all attributable to the somewhat arbitrary goal I gave myself.

Hi Justin,

I think I'm probably within your core demographics. I read everything on the aforementioned site and I'm still unsure as to what you guys are building. Can you provide us with a bit of a snapshot?

I'd love to be excited given that I'm a fan and I work in the field you're entering, but so far I'm just very confused.

I don't think the point of the site is to sell the product.

It's to build awareness and recruit great people. They talk about the problem they're solving, their legit team, and list the positions they're hiring for. All wrapped in a clean design.

> I read everything

And the truth is you shouldn't have even had to 'read everything'.

This is exciting...godspeed. In almost every big company I have either worked at or done business with, the legal team (in-house and external) was a bottleneck when trying to get something significant done in a reasonable time frame.

In most cases it wasn't because they objected to what was trying to be done or that they were lazy (they always seemed to work the longest hours). They just never seem to have the cycles to focus on what needed to be reviewed.

I hope these efforts can help make that part of my world a little more efficient.

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.

I am wondering - why did you decide to raise outside money at all? I assume you would have been able to do the round yourself, save time / effort around the fundraising process and concentrate on product instead?

It's market/opportunity validation when you can convince others to share the risk.

Probably because he expects people who are financing to become customers and help tell other friends in the industry how amazing the company is.

"It’s not just about the capital, but about getting a funnel of companies and individuals that could be potential customers as Atrium"

I have often wondered the same thing when similarly successful people raise money for startups. With $X00 million in the bank, it would be better to self-finance for $10.5MM that if they truly believe in the business. However, if they believe that the probability of success is very low, I suppose it would make sense for them to use their name to get others to take the financial risk for them. For this reason, as an investor, I would shy away from stratospherically wealthy entrepreneurs looking for money, but SV VC's seem quite willing to give money to people that don't need it.

This assumes you believe that investors can't help you succeed in your business. I believe our investors can help us a lot.

Fair enough. I was speaking generally. In the case of this specific venture, you may very well turn out to be correct.

Good luck with your new business!

Thank you!

To expand on my point further: the same logic could be used to say entrepreneurs with the means to do so should only pay employees in cash and not equity (because you can afford to do so and believe the equity will have higher economic value ultimately). However, pretty much all seasoned founders I know want to compensate employees with some equity, under the theory that those employees will be more motivated to see the business be successful.

I think the same logic applies to your investor base (which is one of the selling points that crowd funding sources like Angel List or Funders Club maintain).

> However, pretty much all seasoned founders I know want to compensate employees with some equity, under the theory that those employees will be more motivated to see the business be successful.

AKA Golden Handcuffs of the lesser variety.

What I say is: 'I'd rather have your connections than your money'.

As someone who helps investors with some of their investments that is often a missed point. Reviewing your list of investors I've worked with several of them. Knowing exactly who to call to get an answer, advice, or help can be just as important or actually more important than money. Obviously.

I remember when an investor approached me many many years ago to buy something that I was selling that the firm wanted. I remember thinking 'I'd rather have access to your connections than your money'.

There's great value in showing that people other than yourself — people who have found other market-validated successes — have enough confidence to put skin in your game.

Congrats, Augie is a great guy so a huge win there as you already know.

Just wanted to second close to the top that Augie is not only a great lawyer, but a fantastic human being and committed to helping the startup community.

If you're needing help with infosec, I highly braintrace.com They specialize in law firm information security.

Are you targeting corporate transactional practices, litigation, or a mix? What size of firm are you going after?

At first building tools for corporate transactional practices, but we have big plans for other practice areas.

That's the right starting point. I was in-house counsel at a large tech company and worked in biglaw before that. Most companies let law firms specify how work is done. But most lawyers will accommodate if a client says "this is the tool that we require all of our lawyers to use for [project management] [billing/invoice management] [contract generation/status tracking] [etc]".

Quick question: Are you hiring senior rails developers for remote positions?

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