Hacker News Reader

I'm a lawyer turned software engineer and I'm amazed at how much the two jobs have in common. Not the technical stuff, obviously, but in the mental tools that I use on the job - like understanding complex systems and its nuances and failure points, thinking through the cascading implications of changes, weighing tradeoffs, communicating complex topics to non-experts, writing clearly, etc.

Same. Five years as a federal patent litigator and I'm shocked how much of the soft skills, and thought processes apply in my new life as an engineer.

Make sure you realize this if you start taking law school classes, you need the undergrad engrg or CS degree in the US to sit for that exam and practice before the bar in that specialty.

Patent law is no longer a good career track. There are so many patent agents today (post-recession) that it's very difficult to find non-contract jobs. Patent litigation is still a lucrative career path and doesn't require a US science/engineering degree, but it is significantly harder and more stressful. Patent litigation is also more about the litigation than the patent, so quite often the best patent litigators have no engineering or science background at all!

Engineers make fucking excellent lawyers. Statutes construed alongside caselaw is sort of like data sheets alongside a schematic and code. You'll blow past everyone else in school and research will be a snap.

Did not find that to be true at all. The engineers were the worst law students because they kept expecting black-and-white or determinable outcomes when the law is frequently incapable of any of that sort. The engineers who shed their engineering backgrounds did great though, largely because of their background in studying rather than anything related to being an engineer.

Good engineer attys are efficient and effective and don't hold back the truth. Your clients will come back to you and trust you. You will be a rainmaker on merit. But schmoozing, man, learn it if you don't do it. I can't: It hurt. YMMV if you practice for a large firm and are expected to book 8K billable hours per year.

Good lawyers are efficient and effective and don't hold back the truth. Their pre-lawyer background is generally irrelevant and engineers aren't any better at this than non-engineers. This is also unrelated to being a rainmaker--generally, for that sort of business development, it's about connections and schmoozing, where the truth rarely if ever is relevant.

Also, no firm requires a lawyer to bill 8000 hours a year. That's 22 billable hours/day, 365 days a year. I assume you meant 2000 hours/year, which is the normal standard for BigLaw firms in the US.

> Patent law is no longer a good career track. There are so many patent agents today (post-recession) that it's very difficult to find non-contract jobs. Patent litigation is still a lucrative career path and doesn't require a US science/engineering degree, but it is significantly harder and more stressful. Patent litigation is also more about the litigation than the patent, so quite often the best patent litigators have no engineering or science background at all!

Now I find this out? And I loved litigation. So to add to my list of not to-dos: Don't boutique or solo right out of law school and if you don't like the answer you hear, be like that client who keeps asking the same question in slightly different ways hoping for a different answer until you get that different answer, and it's correct, and you've found the way into the area of the law you'd prefer to be in.

Patent law is still a good track. But you have to know your stuff. Emerging companies that require good IP still pay top dollar for patents.

Glad you enjoyed it! You're spot on: it's a UK take (the authors are based in the UK but work with lawyers from all over), but intended to generalise to most legal systems.

Some of the best lawyers we know in transactional law, IP and, in some cases litigation, come from STEM backgrounds, either academically and / or via prior experience in a STEM sector.

That's an amazing achievement to have paid your way through law school via software royalties. Kudos!

As you say, there are lots of overlaps between the two disciplines. We're trying to write up a continuing series of articles snapshotting these overlaps to help bridge between the techies wanting to work with lawyers and the lawyers wanting to work with techies. This was our first experiment with such content: https://lawtomated.com/law-coding-variables-and-defined-term...

For a first experiment I think you have a winner. It does a great job analogizing routine contract drafting to scripting. I'd give that article to a coder that's not sure about facing seemingly unfamiliar concepts in a different setting, for reassurance. Keep up the great work. I will look for your other submissions as you post them here.

Thanks for the feedback and that's a great idea! Will have to run it by some pure dev contacts.

8k billable hours per year = 153 hours per week. Not even Elon Musk works that much.

it's easy if you eat/sleep 2.14 hours daily and work every other second of the day

You are indeed correct. Nevertheless that's the way it is for new grads - 1st and 2nd yr fresh out of law school - at high end medium and large firms that are sort of like pyramid schemes. The associate newbies need to generate those billables (are those realtime hours? I never checked. Does the client check?). The partners get their cut from those billables. Periodically the herd is winnowed to make room for those with more energy.

You are indeed correct. Nevertheless that's the way it is for new grads - 1st and 2nd yr fresh out of law school - at high end medium and large firms that are sort of like pyramid schemes.

I'm questioning whether you have actually worked for a firm because your expectations for firm billing are wildly inaccurate as is your understanding of how billing works in a firm.

1st year lawyers bill time which generally doesn't get charged to client, because clients are unwilling to pay for training brand new lawyers.

Associates after their first year generally bill between 1600 and 2400 hours/year, depending on the firm. All of those hours are actual hours worked because a lawyer who lies about that is committing fraud and can be disbarred for that (in addition to facing criminal sanctions). Clients do verify the hours billed--which is why lawyers are required to provide very detailed descriptions of hours worked, in some cases down to 6-minute intervals (i.e., tenths of an hour).

Partners bill in addition to those associate hours. The only partners that get to avoid doing billable work are the rainmakers, because they do the tough work of actually acquiring paying clients. 5th-7th year associates generate the most profits for law firms because they have the highest ratio of gross billings (= hourly rate x hours billed) to salary, though partners usually generate the most revenue for their firms.

> I'm questioning whether you have actually worked for a firm because your expectations for firm billing are wildly inaccurate as is your understanding of how billing works in a firm.

Let me end your speculation: All of my time was in 1 and 2 person law firms. The inflated billables are anecdata from my classmates. You may rightly call those out as anecdata. As for myself and the firms I worked in no attorney ever exceeded 1K billables in a year.

If you work for 36 minutes and bill for an hour, you can bill five hours for every three hours of work. You just have to switch clients every 36 minutes.

That is billing fraud.

You are only allowed to bill a unit of time to 1 client unless the work actually involved multiple clients. Thus, if you bill a client for 1 hour, you cannot bill a separate client for that same hour. You can, however, divide up that hour and equally bill clients for a portion of the hour.

If you bill on an hourly basis but switch between clients during that hour, generally you need to track your time down to portions of an hour and bill out at the end of the billing period accordingly. Thus, if you bill hourly but worked on client X for 0.56 hours 8 times, you would bill them for 4 or 5 hours at the end of the period, not 8.

> ...book 8K billable hours per year...

How does that actually work?

If you have some 100hrs of paperwork to do, you can get 25 associates/paralegals/whatever to work for four hours each and have it done by end of day. That's still 100 billable hours.

from what I’ve seen not every hour is 1:1. 15, and 30 minute tasks are billed at an hour. And projects handled that take special expertise can be billed with a multiplier. So reading and summarizing some document for 2.5 hours might turn in to being billed for 12

That is considered billing fraud. Lawyers are not allowed to apply "multipliers" to time billed to the client if they are billing hourly...unless they are using the multipliers to reduce the time billed. I.e., administrative work is billed at 0.25x of normal rates.

Any legaltech startups that you like?

One posted here on HN about to offer bankruptcy services. One of the problems with that besides them not having Florida counsel is that the consumer bankruptcy market's been in a race to the bottom after BAPCPA passed (something like 2007 or 8 I forget). Between petition prepares acting as pseudo attorneys and actual law firms bifurcating their services in what used to be an impermissible way (small amount pre-filing, more "optionally" on installments after filing but immediately before meeting of creditors) the only feasible bankruptcy practice is one that's willing to litigate creditors in bankruptcy court on non-bankruptcy matters, one that has the stick toitiveness to seek appointment by the court to recover exemplary damages for the estate - provided there's a cut for the client - and there aren't bankruptcy courts everywhere. The firm has to be < 15 minutes from the courthouse or the clerk will so screw up your schedule you'll never be able to attend creditor meetings, hearings, and meet with clients.

Were there other startups you had in mind, or could link me to?

Atrium (ex-Twitch founder): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20239883

DoNotPay evolving ..? https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609418/this-chatbot-will-...

Here are some reviews of Stanford's FutureLaw 2019:

http://www.legalexecutiveinstitute.com/futurelaw-2019/

https://www.lawzam.com/blog/a-retrospective-on-the-codex-fut...

This is a really good overview of the legaltech start-up ecosystem as it is today. Slightly European focus, but increasingly global: https://www.legalgeek.co/startup-map/

It's produced by one of the major legaltech meet-up / events groups, legalgeek, in conjunction with Thomson Reuters, who are also a major legaltech provider.