Legaltech startup conference

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We define a legaltech start-up conference as “opportunities for fantasists to meet the credulous to flog them stuff they don’t need with budgets they don’t have”.

Here is an interesting list for the neural network to parse: here are the two hundred and seventy-seven (277) vendors listed in the Legal Geek “Startup Map” Now I confess, not all of these are necessarily for profit businesses (by which I mean intending to make a profit; a large portion of them, however well disposed to the idea of making a profit, won’t actually make one) — there are some, even at a quick scan, that don’t even try. And some are unique and different. But they are the great minority. Most fall into the legaltech landscape as mapped out by Alex Hamilton.

Now there can be no doubt that the amount a multinational is prepared to spend in the pursuit, defence and analysis of its legal rights and obligations is, as far as makes any difference, infinite, but the categories of problem it encounters when doing that, that legaltech can profitably solve, are not.

Now a tiny fraction of an enormous number is still, for a couple of guys in a WeWork office in Shoreditch with laptop, a SquareSpace account and a Bulgarian coder they found on UpWork, a very big number. That is the legaltech promise.

It might make good on that promise — might — were there only one such “startup” with the bright idea, but, per the above, there are literally hundreds of them.

Even leaving aside the JC’s usual perorations about scale and rent-extraction thresholds — plainly these are to be ignored — just the length of this list ought to prompt some questions.

Consider the humble word processor. There are billions of users of word processing software. There are, to all intents, two viable word-processing applications in the world, and one of them is free. If WordPerfect can't make a fist of it, how on earth with Lexrifyly?

It strikes us there are two explanations for this bafflingly rich microcosm; neither of them predict a cosy ecosystem for lawtech startups.

Consolidation

One is that the sector is simply overdue for the consolidation that will push it into the mainstream. These are all good little ideas but, un-knitted, they are too tepid to get anywhere. Once the power of affiliation dawns on them — the founders of 15 basically interchangeable contract automation tools were to swallow their pride and amalgamate, pooling resources, expertise and clients, then an apex predator might emerge to thin out the gene pool. One or two vendors are starting to do this, but in the main, we are still on the frontier, where footloose imagineers can pursue their crazy dreams. This can’t last. It didn’t in the dotcom boom, either.

This, we think, is the optimistic view: all this excitement; all these inflated expectations will eventually settle down and a stable, smart set of sophisticated legal tools will emerge.

On this view the major players focus on enterprise, not niche, and sophisticated law tools are niche.

Lawtech doesn’t scale

The other view is pessimistic: there is a reason for for the the variety. As we like to say, tedium is particular, not generic.

And, also, consider two very well-funded, sophisticated market participants who are perfectly positioned clean up in this sector, but who, despite twenty years of opportunity, haven’t: Microsoft and Google. You have to wonder whether they know something these three hundred legaltech gurus don’t. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

On this view, these little firms owe their continued survival to the single, unique problem they solve for their limited range of clients. Many have one or two clients each. It stands to reason that you orient your product and develop it according to the expectations of your anchor tenant. This same unique use case may be a barrier to acquiring that second client, whose unique conundrum does not quite match.

But does this not, in itself ask difficult questions about the the real promise of legaltech? Does this not give the lie to how clever this technology really is? How do you reconcile an ecosystem brimming with solutions so wooden and inflexible that they can’t easily iterate, with the breathless promise of artificial intelligence?

Either there is a winner, and it will be an order of magnitude better than the rest, or this is a busted flush, only sustained by the wilful suspension of disbelief that accompanies dying days of a bubble. Either way, most participants, expect an ice age. Winter is coming.

On “niche” versus “enterprise”

“Niche vs. enterprise” is an interesting prism to view the market. If legaltech really is niche, it doesn’t scale. It is too fiddly, too context dependent, too hard to adapt to adjacent opportunities. But the whole premise of lawtech, remember, is that it does scale. That is can do exactly that: adjust, magically, to unexpected adjacencies; to handle things it has never seen before; that, free of our mortal frames it can pull off manoeuvres of which even a grand master could not dream. This is brave talk, of course. Legaltech is the wager that that will happen. Meatware — an investment in our learned friends, the legal eagles — is the bet that it won’t: that legaltech does not, ultimately, scale: that, when all said and done, it will turn out to be more like a conjuring trick.

Legaltech does not (yet) scale. There are lots of underwhelming, poorly conceptualised offerings, all obliged to extract outrageous rent — see below — because they don’t scale. So can legaltech scale? The best answers currently go the other way: OneNDA, for example, looks to genericise a legal process so it doesn’t need sophisticated legaltech: enterprise tech will work on it. But, simplifying is hard: it takes deep expertise, risk-awareness, a sense for psychology and market experience. The legal eagle paradox: the more expertise and experience you have the less inclined you are to simplify. Mastery of the ineffable is your unique selling point.

But there is, too, the legaltech paradox: just as the meatware is disinclined to simplify, so is legaltech. Of the 277 offerings below, how many dedicate their machine learning, NLP, neural networks and artificial intelligence to making law simple?

On inhouse versus private practice

One last go round: the dynamics play differently in private practice to how they do inhouse. Niche legal tech could survive behind the wall in private practice: the incentives are different, productivity tools are directly generative of revenue, and there is thus, appetite for the ongoing payment of rent. But this is an unambitious articulation of legaltech, not as some kind of replacement for the meatware, but dumb machinery to be used by it in the service of what the meatware has always done: ineffably mastering the ineffable.

These solutions cannot all be different

Many of these startups have had, more or less, the same idea. Most have a variation on one of about five ideas. Each of these ideas is, in the abstract, a sound idea. But it is not enough for your idea to be sound, if a lot of other people have had the same idea. And if for every tech entrepreneur who has had a bright idea, there are other people who have also had that idea, but just not acted upon it — possibly on the pretext that, while it is a good idea, it is also an obvious one, people all over the world have been having it for years, and it would be hard to monetise —

• Abogadea
  
• Access Solicitor
  
• AdaptingLegal
  
• Addalia
  
• Ageras
  
• AgileCase
  
• Aivan
  
• Alacrity Law Limited
  
• Altis
  
• Alyne
  
• amicable
  
• Amiqus
  
• Annotate
  
• Apperio
  
• Appjection
  
• Arachnys
  
• Archii
  
• Aspirant Analytics
  
• Atkins-Shield
  
• Atomian
  
• Autto
  
• Avail
  
• Avokaado
  
• Avvoka
  
• Bigle Legal
  
• BigLegal
  
• BizBot
  
• BlockchainyourIP
  
• Bounsel
  
• Briefed
  
• BusyLamp
  
• Call A Lawyer
  
• Capdesk
  
• Case Crunch
  
• Case Law Analytics
  
• Casedo
  
• CaseHub
  
• CE Check
  
• Certifydoc
  
• Claim It
  
• Clara
  
• Clause
  
• ClauseBase
  
• ClauseMatch
  
• Clocktimizer
  
• CloudLegal
  
• Cognitiv+
  
• ComplyCloud
  
• ConfirmSign
  
• Consult.law
  
• Contract Mill
  
• Contractbook
  
• Contractinbox
  
• Contractpedia
  
• ContractPodAi
  
• Contracts Done
  
• ContractZen
  
• Corporify
  
• Courtsdesk
  
• Crafty Counsel
  
• CrowdJustice
  
• Data Solver
  
• Databoxer
  
• Datajuristes
  
• Dealsign
  
• Define
  
• Della AI
  
• Demander Justice
  
• DIGURA
  
• DinArv
  
• Dine Arvinger
  
• Doc2
  
• DocGovern
  
• Doctrine
  
• Documendo
  
• Docxpresso
  
• Domaine Legal
  
• Donna
  
• DoNotPay
  
• E3CT
  
• easyQuorum
  
• eContractHub
  
• eEvidence
  
• eGarante
  
• eJust
  
• elAbogado
  
• Enforcd
  
• Enloya
  
• Enoron
  
• Exizent
  
• eXperYenz
  
• F-LEX
  
• Farewill
  
• find my Notary
  
• Find Others
  
• Fintact
  
• FlexeBoss
  
• Fliplet
  
• Forum Jurisprudence
  
• FRisk Reports (trading as FRisk)
  
• FromCounsel
  
• Gaius
  
• Gatekeeper
  
• Genie AI
  
• GOlegal
  
• Green Meadow
  
• Happy Resolution
  
• Hoowla
  
• Hoxro Limited
  
• Hunit Ltd
  
• Hyperlex
  
• Ilves
  
• inCase
  
• incaseof.law
  
• Inddubio
  
• Indemniflight
  
• Indemniza.Me
  
• Indio
  
• InsiderLog
  
• Intelllex
  
• InTouch
  
• iubel
  
• Juralio
  
• JuriBlox
  
• Juriosity
  
• JuriPhone
  
• Juro
  
• JUST: Access Ltd
  
• JustBeagle
  
• Kleros
  
• Knowlex
  
• Kormoon
  
• Kudocs
  
• La Fabrique Juridique
  
• Lakivälitys
  
• Law Tech Factory
  
• Lawbite
  
• Lawers
  
• LawPanel
  
• LawXero
  
• LawyerlinQ
  
• Le Droit Pour Moi
  
• Lean Entries
  
• Legal Monitor
  
• legalbono
  
• Legalcomplex
  
• LegalDutch
  
• Legalesign
  
• LegaleXe
  
• LegalHero
  
• Legaline
  
• LegalThings
  
• legalydocs
  
• Legartis
  
• Legatics
  
• Legito
  
• Legly
  
• LEX superior
  
• LexDigo
  
• LexGo App
  
• LexIQ
  
• Lexly
  
• Lexolve
  
• Lexoo
  
• LexSnap
  
• LexStep
  
• Libryo
  
• Ligabis
  
• Linkilaw
  
• Listened.to
  
• Logical Construct
  
• Made in law
  
• MaitreData
  
• Majoto Lab Limited
  
• MaNewCo
  
• matters.Cloud
  
• Matters+
  
• Milcontratos
  
• Mon-avocat
  
• Monax
  
• myBarrister
  
• MyDocSafe
  
• MyLegalAdviser
  
• MyNotary
  
• Nalytics
  
• Nemo Jus
  
• nubbius
  
• Oasi - Online Arbitration & Settlement Institute
  
• Oathello
  
• Office & Dragons
  
• Ohalo
  
• Oneflow
  
• Online Lawyers
  
• online solution attorney
  
• Onna Technologies
  
• Oratto
  
• Orbital Witness
  
• P&K TimeApp
  
• Panache Software
  
• PatentProfs
  
• PersonalData.IO
  
• Persuit
  
• PingaLawyer
  
• PolicyStore
  
• Post-Quantum
  
• Precisely
  
• Predictice
  
• ProAnnexUs
  
• ProFinda
  
• PUNTO NEUTRO
  
• PymeLegal
  
• PythAgoria
  
• Quarande
  
• Reclamador
  
• ReviewSolicitors
  
• RFRNZ
  
• RightsDD
  
• Rosetta Advisor
  
• Route1
  
• Ruby Datum
  
• Scribestar
  
• Scrive
  
• Seers Group
  
• Sharedo
  
• Sibyl
  
• Signaturit
  
• SignRequest
  
• singlerulebook.com
  
• Sket.io
  
• SnapDragon
  
• SoftLaw
  
• Solomonic
  
• SomeBuddy
  
• Sopimustieto
  
• Sparqa Legal
  
• Spectr
  
• StructureFlow
  
• Summize
  
• synergist.io
  
• Tabled
  
• TagDox
  
• Teal Legal Ltd
  
• Tenant Compensation
  
• Teqmine
  
• Terminis
  
• TestaViva
  
• The Law Superstore
  
• The Link App
  
• The Privacy Compliance Hub
  
• thedocyard
  
• thingsTHINKING
  
• Third Way Legal
  
• Thirdfort
  
• ThoughtRiver
  
• TIQtime
  
• Tirant Analytics
  
• Tonic Works
  
• Top 3 Legal
  
• TrademarkNow
  
• Trakti
  
• TripleCheck
  
• tuAppbogado
  
• UNAES
  
• Unpaid
  
• Vable
  
• Validated ID
  
• Vaxes
  
• VENNCOMM
  
• Vizlegal
  
• Votre Robin
  
• VQ Legal
  
• Waymark Tech
  
• welegal.es
  
• WillSuite
  
• Winu
  
• XBundle
  
• ZYNYO
  

“Legal tech entrepreneurs say the funniest things” department

“we love automation. We love automating complex things. Our app can handle anything with its structured questions: it can add new clauses, new schedules. The complexity is mind-bending.” — Clarilis