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disruptthelaw

113 karma · joined April 21, 2021

CONTINUED FROM https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26887408

...Lawyers can self-publish legal opinions, templates, checklists etc. They are prompted to tag the content by jurisdiction, category etc and to cite related case law and legislation. We organise the legal info in ways that make it really useful for readers, with advanced filtering, search, recommendations, and cross referencing. We become the Google for legal info.

The majority of content is free to consume and we monetize by granting paid publishers extra prominence, reporting, and lead gen tools. But we can then also add an editorial layer to curate, procure, and review selected content. This editorial layer creates certain content that is more authoritative and credible. You can charge for this layer of content which allows you capture market share from the entrenched legal publishers.

Path to market? we start by tackling a narrow horizontal, ie one area of law (fundamentals of doing business in various countries) as a starting point.

Its a manual process of reaching out to content producers and law firms and gradually getting them to load content. For a year or 2 you struggle but at some point you have enough good content to attract high volume of readers organically and then content producers naturally want to load content.

ABOUT ME

In my late thirties. I'm using a throwaway account so that my company does not find out. But I will disclose all info in full in private.

I'm deeply embedded in this space and I've seen all of the above use cases first hand. After qualifying as a lawyer I founded a legal info site that caters for use cases a, b and c (for a certain country, not global). This website attracts close to 100k unique readers a month a hundreds of high quality leads for the lawyers that write on the website (use case C)

I've since sold that platform and now work at large multinational legal publisher. Unfortunately my company is too large and dysfunctional to really deliver on the full capability of this product. They also do not understand how the 4 use-cases above fit together and they dont have an efficient model to pull this strands together and deliver on them in a sustainable way. My frustration leads me to wanting to go independent.

I'm a generalist and very resourceful. I know quite a bit about tech, SEO, UX, product management principles, and the legal market.

WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR

I need a team to help build the product and I need finance. So it could mean taking on a CTO, or it could be someone with access to seed finance and who can help me hire a dev lead, or a combination thereof.

In order to leave my job and devote myself full time I need a starting salary of around 70k$ per year.

Ideally I would like cofounders who understand how to get finance and who can build the right kind of network. I primarily want to focus on the product. growth and revenue model as much as reasonably possible.

Ideally my cofounders are well suited for this space and are in it for the long haul.

submissionscomments
disruptthelaw··on How Tube Amplifiers Work
When a webpage loads that looks like it was made in the 90’s, no ads, and is too wide for mobile so I have to drag from side to side, I know the content is gonna be legit.
disruptthelaw··on Expanding on what we missed with sycophancy
Yes. While these claims might be hyperbolic and simplistic, I don’t think they’re way off the mark.

The above issue, whilst relevant and worth factoring, doesn’t disprove this claim IMO.

disruptthelaw
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·on Start a fucking blog
Publish posts on your blog, share links to those posts on social media.
disruptthelaw··on BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff
Have you observed any other path for new want-to-be developers other than boot camps that tends to yield better outcomes ?
disruptthelaw··on Show HN: Rethinking Tabs in Firefox
Tab suspender is your friend
disruptthelaw··on The first minute of every phone call is torture now
I remember overseas calls having a huge lag. Now I can call across and works and chat with perfect audio and video. I think we’re romanticizing the past and failing to recognize the ways in which calls are so much better.
disruptthelaw··on Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
In Hebrew the days of the week are named numerically: first day, second day etc. Sunday is the first day of the week in israel. Saturday, the last day of the Hebrew week is the only one not named numerically, it’s called sabbath.
disruptthelaw··on Write plain text files
And easy linking and bi-directional linking. Once you experience these two features it’s very hard to imagine notes without it. That’s the main reason I couldn’t go with the authors workflow of just plain text files.
disruptthelaw··on How I got wealthy without working too hard
I’m not sure I agree with the narrative that 1$ earned as a contractor is worth less than 1$ earned as an employee. Seems to me that the opposite is true. A contractor can get much more creative with taxes, off setting loads of expenses against his income thus having a significantly lower effective tax rate than the employee with equivalent gross income.
disruptthelaw··on OnlyFans drops planned porn ban
Let’s say OF was forced to switch to crypto payments. They could make the switch tomorrow. Link to a few popular crypto exchanges so that customers know where to buy crypto and Bob’s your uncle.
disruptthelaw··on OnlyFans drops planned porn ban
This is the most plausible explanation in my opinion.

OF we’re in the potential firing line so they rallied their user base and created a strong narrative.

They can now say that they tried to limit porn but too many vulnerable people would suffer as a result.

It’s a brilliant maneuver if this is what happened.

disruptthelaw··on OnlyFans drops planned porn ban
I also wonder if OF customers prefer paying girls who have less fans. This allows the person paying to have more personal interaction and to have more influence/control over the girl for less money. So market forces therefore would drive a long tail
disruptthelaw··on Visa Buys CryptoPunk #7610
Also, many of those debating and getting their toes wet in crypto are not necessarily predicting it will work, they’re just hedging their bets in case it does. For example I’ve got about 3% of my Investible wealth in crypto. If it tanks to zero I wouldn’t consider myself “wrong”.

Crypto skepticism is still a fairly mainstream position, it’s not unique to HN.

disruptthelaw··on Visa Buys CryptoPunk #7610
I’m genuinely agnostic on your question, either of those possibilities strike me as roughly equally plausible.
disruptthelaw··on Launch HN: Awesomic (YC S21) – Get design tasks done with 24-hour turnaround
I haven’t seen the terms of the deal but it presume that most customers on the monthly retainer will not submit a task every day, maybe on average every 4 or 5 business days. That changes the maths quite a bit
disruptthelaw··on List of Special Elevator Modes
I took my gap year in israel with a religious Jewish friends. We were slight stoners back then and on sabbath in order for him to get high I’d have to light a bong in a cupboard and fill the cupboard with smoke and then swap places with him. This was multiple times per sabbath every sabbath. I also had to constantly open the fridge for him because of the automatic light. I found these rituals ridiculous (20 years later I still do) and we fought over it and decided to part ways for the rest of the gap year.
disruptthelaw··on Steve Wozniak speaks on Right to Repair [video]
The solution to that is for savvy consumers like us to band together and form a non governmental ratings agency that gives a stamp of approval to products that meet a repair standard. Same as “certified free range” or “certified kosher” food. Or if we insist of policy intervention then we should just force companies to have a label specifying if the product is repairable or not. That on its own should be a sufficient intervention to influence buying behavior but maintains free choice for everyone
disruptthelaw··on Steve Wozniak speaks on Right to Repair [video]
I’m with you comrade https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27762177

I too got downvoted

disruptthelaw··on Right to repair movement gains power in US and Europe
Yeah because such a company would make less profit because people wouldn’t have to replace their products as often. But having a private industry body ensures that company that does opt to make their product repairable get duly accredited. Then if you want to buy this more expensive device then you have the choice. If not enough people are willing to pay the premium then maybe this solution isn’t as urgent as we think and isn’t work the regulatory overhead and increased product cost
disruptthelaw··on Right to repair movement gains power in US and Europe
Why does it have to be imposed and enforced. If you think about it, this law reduces profit for firms which will get pushed back to consumers in the form of price. Why not let those consumers who want to pay that “tax” have the choice. And I don’t see how collusion comes into it, the rating organization I propose loses credibility unless it’s considered objective so it’s incentives to work for consumers.

Enforcing this rule is like forcing all meat manufacturers to be Kosher. As it stands those who want to eat kosher can opt to pay the extra “kosher tax” which goes to the beth din, a private organization that confirms products are kosher. Why should non Jews pays that tax. If someone would rather pay less for a product that he can’t fix, why deny him that choice.

disruptthelaw··on Right to repair movement gains power in US and Europe
I like fixing things rather than discarding so I’m in favor of the underlying principle. But I’d prefer a free-market solution rather than a regulatory one. I’d rather someone creates a private civil society organization whose gives a stamp of approval for products that meet the repair standard. The market can decide to pay a slight premium for products that go through approval process. I don’t see why this standard should be forced on everyone, and it create more regulatory complexity, more government overhead to enforce, and so on.
disruptthelaw··on Ask HN: Who is looking for a co-founder? (July 2021)
My bad please get in touch at info@getsporty.co.za

(This is my secondary mail as I don’t want to share my personal one on public thread)

disruptthelaw··on Ask HN: Who is looking for a co-founder? (July 2021)
Remote (I’m in Johannesburg, South Africa) I'm looking for a technical co-founder to join me disrupting the legal research and publishing industry. I am a lawyer now working as a senior product manager at one of the large players in this industry.

The industry has copied its print business models and simply put it content online. The UX, editorial operations, pricing models, all stuck in the past. For example, the choice of content is chosen at firm level and all lawyers have exactly same set of content. There is no content ratings and review systems in the software so publishers are missing an easy and cheap way to get valuable data which would aid in optimising content.

The solution I've specced caters for curating crowd-sourced content from practitioners (and providing them leads and publicity via their content in return).

disruptthelaw··on How to Work Hard
It’s always a trade off and there’s no right answer for everyone. I spent my twenties roughly as you advise, and i definitely grew and learned from it. But some of my counterparts focused on career and have achieved more on that front and have been able to have more freedom in their thirties as a result. It’s not obvious that either path is better. There is no optimal
disruptthelaw··on The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air
What is your workflow to process all the emails to yourself?
disruptthelaw··on 43% of South African youths are not in employment, education or training
I would speculate that, on the whole, they’re probably comparable in terms of outcome, the old system was designed for mediocre outcomes whereas the current one is due to negligence. But could be wrong, our former white public schools now serve everyone and presumably are better than the Bantu education schools that black people were previously limited to. These schools are of course the minority.
disruptthelaw··on We’re all paying for someone else’s 4-hour work week, not ours
I don’t follow, how does my claim imply that number of working hours would decrease or that conditions would increase? Those seem to be factors that fall outside of the specific forces we are discussing?
disruptthelaw··on We’re all paying for someone else’s 4-hour work week, not ours
To clarify the Schindler analogy, I’m obviously not suggesting that we deserve medals for providing low paid work, just that the work we provide is not causing harm, on the contrary it’s a slight improvement on the alternative options for those who take the work.
disruptthelaw··on We’re all paying for someone else’s 4-hour work week, not ours
> our quite privileged lifestyles do have a concomitant cost for somebody who needs to service our day-to-day needs and wants.

But it stands to reasons that those who service our needs are doing so because it’s better for them than the alternative. If there is a systemic problem which results in lack of viable alternatives then attack those systemic causes, but it’s not obvious to me how those of us who who benefit from these services are the main cause of this issue. This seems tantamount to blaming Oscar Schindler for underpaying his Jewish factory workers rather than seeing the bigger picture in why those workers were happy to take low paying factory work.

You almost make it sound like the people who service our needs are forced to do so. It’s not like they’re giving up life of comfort and leisure because they’re forced to do our laundry.

disruptthelaw··on 43% of South African youths are not in employment, education or training
By your logic if 0.000000001% of the population was killed while going for walks each day you could say going for a walk was literally risking your life.

Obviously these things operate on a scale and I’m not saying that there is zero risk. I was addressing your hyperbolic binary view of things. Saying that going for a walk in South Africa is risking your life is complete nonsense.

Source: I’ve lived in Johannesburg (most “dangerous” city in SA) for 30 years and have been an avid walker for most of these. In fact I “risked my life” for an hour just this afternoon, it was lovely.

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