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{{a|devil|
{{a|devil|
[[File:Kids say the funniest things.png|400px|thumb|center|An occasional column devoted to gems from the IT profession]]
{{image|Kids say the funniest things|png|An occasional column devoted to gems from the IT profession}}
}}{{quote|“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.”  
}}{{quote|“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.” — [[Cass Mälstrom]], [[CEO]] of [[Lexrifyly]], live on ''Legaltech Entrepreneurs Say the Funniest Things!{{tm}}''}}
:[[Cass Mälstrom]], [[CEO]] of [[Lexrifyly]], live on ''Legaltech Entrepreneurs Say the Funniest Things!{{tm}}''}}
We define a [[legaltech start-up conference]] as “opportunities for [[Reg tech entrepreneur|fantasists]] to meet the [[General counsel|credulous]] to flog them [[Legal tech landscape|stuff they don’t need]] with [[When budget allows|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) [[vendor]]s listed in the Legal Geek “Startup Map”<ref>I am not making this up: https://www.legalgeek.co/startup-map/. There could be more: the bamboozling way it is set out made it hard to be sure I had go them all.</ref> 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 {{author|Alex Hamilton}}.
{{quote|{{d|{{PAGENAME}}|/ˈliːgəltɛk ˈstɑːtʌp ˈkɒnfərəns/|n}} An opportunity for [[Reg tech entrepreneur|fantasists]] to meet the [[General counsel|credulous]] to flog them [[Legal tech landscape|stuff they don’t need]] out of [[When budget allows|budgets they don’t have]]. }}


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.  
At the bottom of this page is an interesting task for the [[neural network]] to parse: the ''two hundred and seventy odd [[vendor]]s listed in the Legal Geek 2021 “Startup Map”<ref>I am not making this up: https://www.legalgeek.co/startup-map/. There could be more: the bamboozling way it is set out made it hard to be sure I had go them all. I have not had the heart, or spleen, to repeat the exercise for 2022 but perhaps I should.</ref>


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.
Now, sure: not ''all'' of these are ''for-profit'' businesses (by which I mean ''intending'' to make a profit; a large portion of them, however well disposed to that idea, ''won’t'') — there are some, even at a quick scan, that don’t even try. And some are, ''sans doubte'', unique and different. But they are the great minority.


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


Even leaving aside the [[JC]]’s usual perorations about scale and [[rent-extraction threshold]]s — plainly these are to be ignored — just the length of this list ought to prompt some questions.  
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 freelance coder|Bulgarian coder they found on ''UpWork'']], a very big number. That is the [[legaltech]] promise.


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]]?
But, and even leaving aside the [[JC]]’s usual perorations about scale and [[rent-extraction threshold]]s — plainly these are to be ignored — the very length of this list ought to prompt some questions. Two hundred and seventy seven startups. There weren’t that many in the dotcom boom.<ref>Hyperbole, I am sure. You needn’t write in.</ref>


It strikes us there are two explanations for this bafflingly rich microcosm; neither of them predict a cosy ecosystem for lawtech startups.
They cannot all survive. Consider there are, literally, ''billions'' of users of word processing software but, 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]]?


===Consolidation===
We see two explanations for this bafflingly rich microcosm. Neither predicts a cosy future for lawtech startups.  
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.
====1. Consolidation is coming====
Perhaps the sector is simply overdue for the consolidation that will push a couple of winners into the mainstream. There are 270-odd undoubtedly good little ideas but, un-knitted, too tepid to get anywhere. Once the power of affiliation dawns on the founders of the dozens interchangeable [[contract automation]] tools and they pool resources, expertise and clients, then an apex predator might emerge.  


On this view the major players focus on ''enterprise'', not ''niche'', and sophisticated law tools are niche.
One or two vendors have done this half-heartedly, but in the main, we are still on the frontier, where footloose imagineers can pursue their crazy dreams. ''This can’t last''.


===Lawtech doesn’t scale===
At any rate this is the optimistic view: all th excitement; all these inflated expectations will eventually settle down and a stable, smart, ''small'' set of sophisticated legal tools will be left standing.
The other view is pessimistic: there is a reason for for all the variety. ''These solutions don’t scale''. As we like to say, [[tedium is particular, not generic|''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.
====2. Lawtech doesn’t scale====
The other view is pessimistic: there’s a reason for for all the variety, but it’s a limiting one: ''These solutions don’t scale''. As we like to say, [[tedium is particular, not generic|''tedium is particular, not generic'']].


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.
After all, well-funded, sophisticated market participants who are ''perfectly positioned'' clean up in this sector, despite twenty years of opportunity, haven’t: for example, Microsoft and Google. Do they know something everyone else does not? Do [[legaltechbro]]s rush in where angels fear to tread?


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]]?
On this view, each firm owes its continued, anaemic survival to the single, unique problem it has solved for its limited range of clients: it stands to reason that you orient your product and develop it according to the expectations of your anchor tenants. This same unique use case may be a barrier to acquiring that second client, whose unique conundrum does not quite match.


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 [[vendor]]<nowiki/>s should brace for an ice age. Winter is coming.
But, if so does this not in itself ask difficult questions about the the real promise of [[legaltech]]? For how do you reconcile an ecosystem brimming with solutions so wooden that they can’t iterate, with the breathless promise of [[artificial intelligence]]?


===On “niche” versus “enterprise” and the meatware vs. hardware wager===
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, ''winter is coming''.
“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.
Yet, as the evenings draw in, we notice that the major players stay focussed on ''enterprise'', as if they see sophisticated law tools as ''niche''.


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''.
===On “niche” versus “enterprise” and the [[meatware]]/software bet===
Now “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 it can do exactly that: adjust, magically, to unexpected adjacencies; to handle things it has never seen before; that, free of our ungainly mortal frames, the machine can pull off manoeuvres that even a grand master could not imagine.  


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''?
This is brave talk, of course.
 
[[Legaltech]] is the bet that will happen. [[Meatware]] — an investment in our friends the [[Legal eagle|legal eagles]] — is the bet 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'' [[legaltech]]: enterprise tech will work on fine.
 
But, simplifying is hard: it takes deep expertise, risk-awareness, a sense for psychology and market experience. The [[legal eagle]] [[paradox]]: the more expertise 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 offerings below, how many dedicate their [[machine learning]], [[natural language processing]], [[neural network]]s and general [[artificial intelligence]] to ''making things simpler''?


=== On inhouse versus private practice===
=== On inhouse versus private practice===
Line 51: Line 57:
===These solutions cannot all be different===
===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 [[Legal tech entrepreneur|tech entrepreneur]] who has had a bright idea, there are others 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 —
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 [[Legal tech entrepreneur|tech entrepreneur]] who has had a bright idea, there are others 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 <br>
===Legaltech roll of honour===
*Access Solicitor <br>
<small>
*AdaptingLegal <br>
{{legaltech roll of honour}}
*Addalia <br>
</small>
*Ageras <br>
*AgileCase <br>
*Aivan <br>
*Alacrity Law Limited <br>
*Altis <br>
*Alyne <br>
*amicable <br>
* Amiqus <br>
*Annotate <br>
*Apperio <br>
*Appjection <br>
*Arachnys <br>
*Archii <br>
*Aspirant Analytics <br>
*Atkins-Shield <br>
*Atomian <br>
*Autto <br>
*Avail <br>
*Avokaado <br>
*Avvoka <br>
*Bigle Legal <br>
*BigLegal <br>
*BizBot <br>
*BlockchainyourIP <br>
*Bounsel <br>
* Briefed <br>
*BusyLamp <br>
*Call A Lawyer <br>
*Capdesk <br>
*Case Crunch <br>
*Case Law Analytics <br>
* Casedo <br>
*CaseHub <br>
*CE Check <br>
*Certifydoc <br>
* Claim It <br>
*Clara <br>
*Clause <br>
*ClauseBase <br>
*ClauseMatch <br>
*Clocktimizer <br>
*CloudLegal <br>
*Cognitiv+ <br>
*ComplyCloud <br>
*ConfirmSign <br>
*Consult.law <br>
*Contract Mill <br>
*Contractbook <br>
*Contractinbox <br>
*Contractpedia <br>
*ContractPodAi <br>
*Contracts Done <br>
*ContractZen <br>
*Corporify <br>
*Courtsdesk <br>
*Crafty Counsel <br>
*CrowdJustice <br>
*Data Solver <br>
*Databoxer <br>
*Datajuristes <br>
*Dealsign <br>
*Define <br>
*Della AI <br>
*Demander Justice <br>
*DIGURA <br>
*DinArv <br>
*Dine Arvinger <br>
* Doc2 <br>
*DocGovern <br>
*Doctrine <br>
*Documendo <br>
*Docxpresso <br>
*Domaine Legal <br>
*Donna <br>
*DoNotPay <br>
*E3CT <br>
*easyQuorum <br>
*eContractHub <br>
*eEvidence <br>
*eGarante <br>
* eJust <br>
*elAbogado <br>
*Enforcd <br>
*Enloya <br>
*Enoron <br>
*Exizent <br>
*eXperYenz <br>
* F-LEX <br>
*Farewill <br>
*find my Notary <br>
*Find Others <br>
*Fintact <br>
* FlexeBoss <br>
*Fliplet <br>
*Forum Jurisprudence <br>
*FRisk Reports (trading as FRisk) <br>
*FromCounsel <br>
*Gaius <br>
*Gatekeeper <br>
*Genie AI <br>
*GOlegal <br>
* Green Meadow <br>
*Happy Resolution <br>
*Hoowla <br>
*Hoxro Limited <br>
*Hunit Ltd <br>
*Hyperlex <br>
*Ilves <br>
*inCase <br>
*incaseof.law <br>
* Inddubio <br>
*Indemniflight <br>
*Indemniza.Me <br>
*Indio <br>
*InsiderLog <br>
*Intelllex <br>
*InTouch <br>
*iubel <br>
*Juralio <br>
*JuriBlox <br>
*Juriosity <br>
*JuriPhone <br>
*Juro <br>
*JUST: Access Ltd <br>
*JustBeagle <br>
*Kleros <br>
*Knowlex <br>
*Kormoon <br>
*Kudocs <br>
*La Fabrique Juridique <br>
* Lakivälitys <br>
*Law Tech Factory <br>
* Lawbite <br>
* Lawers <br>
*LawPanel <br>
*LawXero <br>
*LawyerlinQ <br>
*Le Droit Pour Moi <br>
*Lean Entries <br>
*Legal Monitor <br>
*legalbono <br>
*Legalcomplex <br>
*LegalDutch <br>
*Legalesign <br>
*LegaleXe <br>
*LegalHero <br>
*Legaline <br>
*LegalThings <br>
*legalydocs <br>
*Legartis <br>
*Legatics <br>
*Legito <br>
*Legly <br>
*LEX superior <br>
* LexDigo <br>
*LexGo App <br>
*LexIQ <br>
*Lexly <br>
*Lexolve <br>
*Lexoo <br>
*LexSnap <br>
*LexStep <br>
* Libryo <br>
*Ligabis <br>
*Linkilaw <br>
*Listened.to <br>
*Logical Construct <br>
*Made in law <br>
* MaitreData <br>
*Majoto Lab Limited <br>
*MaNewCo <br>
*matters.Cloud <br>
*Matters+ <br>
*Milcontratos <br>
*Mon-avocat <br>
*Monax <br>
*myBarrister <br>
*MyDocSafe <br>
*MyLegalAdviser <br>
*MyNotary <br>
*Nalytics <br>
* Nemo Jus <br>
*nubbius <br>
*Oasi - Online Arbitration & Settlement Institute <br>
*Oathello <br>
*Office & Dragons <br>
*Ohalo <br>
*Oneflow <br>
*Online Lawyers <br>
* online solution attorney <br>
*Onna Technologies <br>
*Oratto <br>
*Orbital Witness <br>
*P&K TimeApp <br>
*Panache Software <br>
*PatentProfs <br>
*PersonalData.IO <br>
*Persuit <br>
*PingaLawyer <br>
*PolicyStore <br>
*Post-Quantum <br>
*Precisely <br>
*Predictice <br>
*ProAnnexUs <br>
*ProFinda <br>
* PUNTO NEUTRO <br>
*PymeLegal <br>
*PythAgoria <br>
*Quarande <br>
*Reclamador <br>
*ReviewSolicitors <br>
*RFRNZ <br>
*RightsDD <br>
*Rosetta Advisor <br>
*Route1 <br>
*Ruby Datum <br>
*Scribestar <br>
*Scrive <br>
*Seers Group <br>
*Sharedo <br>
*Sibyl <br>
*Signaturit <br>
*SignRequest <br>
*singlerulebook.com <br>
*Sket.io <br>
*SnapDragon <br>
*SoftLaw <br>
*Solomonic <br>
*SomeBuddy <br>
*Sopimustieto <br>
*Sparqa Legal <br>
*Spectr <br>
* StructureFlow <br>
*Summize <br>
*synergist.io <br>
*Tabled <br>
*TagDox <br>
*Teal Legal Ltd <br>
*Tenant Compensation <br>
*Teqmine <br>
*Terminis <br>
*TestaViva <br>
*The Law Superstore <br>
*The Link App <br>
*The Privacy Compliance Hub <br>
*thedocyard <br>
*thingsTHINKING <br>
*Third Way Legal <br>
*Thirdfort <br>
*ThoughtRiver <br>
*TIQtime <br>
*Tirant Analytics <br>
*Tonic Works <br>
*Top 3 Legal <br>
*TrademarkNow <br>
*Trakti <br>
*TripleCheck <br>
*tuAppbogado <br>
*UNAES <br>
*Unpaid <br>
*Vable <br>
*Validated ID <br>
* Vaxes <br>
* VENNCOMM <br>
* Vizlegal <br>
*Votre Robin <br>
*VQ Legal <br>
*Waymark Tech <br>
*welegal.es <br>
*WillSuite <br>
*Winu <br>
*XBundle <br>
*ZYNYO <br>
 


{{ref}}
{{ref}}


<references />
<references />

Latest revision as of 14:16, 16 January 2023


Kids say the funniest things.png
An occasional column devoted to gems from the IT profession


In which the curmudgeonly old sod puts the world to rights.
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“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.” — Cass Mälstrom, CEO of Lexrifyly, live on Legaltech Entrepreneurs Say the Funniest Things!™

Legaltech startup conference
/ˈliːgəltɛk ˈstɑːtʌp ˈkɒnfərəns/ (n.)
An opportunity for fantasists to meet the credulous to flog them stuff they don’t need out of budgets they don’t have.

At the bottom of this page is an interesting task for the neural network to parse: the two hundred and seventy odd vendors listed in the Legal Geek 2021 “Startup Map”[1]

Now, sure: not all of these are for-profit businesses (by which I mean intending to make a profit; a large portion of them, however well disposed to that idea, won’t) — there are some, even at a quick scan, that don’t even try. And some are, sans doubte, unique and different. But they are the great minority.

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

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.

But, and even leaving aside the JC’s usual perorations about scale and rent-extraction thresholds — plainly these are to be ignored — the very length of this list ought to prompt some questions. Two hundred and seventy seven startups. There weren’t that many in the dotcom boom.[2]

They cannot all survive. Consider there are, literally, billions of users of word processing software but, 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?

We see two explanations for this bafflingly rich microcosm. Neither predicts a cosy future for lawtech startups.

1. Consolidation is coming

Perhaps the sector is simply overdue for the consolidation that will push a couple of winners into the mainstream. There are 270-odd undoubtedly good little ideas but, un-knitted, too tepid to get anywhere. Once the power of affiliation dawns on the founders of the dozens interchangeable contract automation tools and they pool resources, expertise and clients, then an apex predator might emerge.

One or two vendors have done this half-heartedly, but in the main, we are still on the frontier, where footloose imagineers can pursue their crazy dreams. This can’t last.

At any rate this is the optimistic view: all th excitement; all these inflated expectations will eventually settle down and a stable, smart, small set of sophisticated legal tools will be left standing.

2. Lawtech doesn’t scale

The other view is pessimistic: there’s a reason for for all the variety, but it’s a limiting one: These solutions don’t scale. As we like to say, tedium is particular, not generic.

After all, well-funded, sophisticated market participants who are perfectly positioned clean up in this sector, despite twenty years of opportunity, haven’t: for example, Microsoft and Google. Do they know something everyone else does not? Do legaltechbros rush in where angels fear to tread?

On this view, each firm owes its continued, anaemic survival to the single, unique problem it has solved for its limited range of clients: it stands to reason that you orient your product and develop it according to the expectations of your anchor tenants. This same unique use case may be a barrier to acquiring that second client, whose unique conundrum does not quite match.

But, if so does this not in itself ask difficult questions about the the real promise of legaltech? For how do you reconcile an ecosystem brimming with solutions so wooden that they can’t 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, winter is coming.

Yet, as the evenings draw in, we notice that the major players stay focussed on enterprise, as if they see sophisticated law tools as niche.

On “niche” versus “enterprise” and the meatware/software bet

Now “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 it can do exactly that: adjust, magically, to unexpected adjacencies; to handle things it has never seen before; that, free of our ungainly mortal frames, the machine can pull off manoeuvres that even a grand master could not imagine.

This is brave talk, of course.

Legaltech is the bet that will happen. Meatware — an investment in our friends the legal eagles — is the bet 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 legaltech: enterprise tech will work on fine.

But, simplifying is hard: it takes deep expertise, risk-awareness, a sense for psychology and market experience. The legal eagle paradox: the more expertise 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 offerings below, how many dedicate their machine learning, natural language processing, neural networks and general artificial intelligence to making things simpler?

On inhouse versus private practice

One last go round: the dynamics play differently in private practice to how they do inhouse.[3] 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 others 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 —

Legaltech roll of honour

Key

👻: Defunct as of ~
🦈: Gobbled
🏷️: Name change
🛸: AI/space-aged
🚑: Ambulance chasing
🤓: Smart contracting
🤖: Automation
🔨: Alternative legal services
₿: Blockchain
🖥️: Process management
🖊️: Digital execution
📚: Knowhow/Training/Compliance
🛒: Marketplace/Spend management
🦮: Support for lawyers
🥐: Continental
💩: Buzzword extravaganza
⚖️: Dreary branding
😬: Eeesh
🤡: Oh dear with the branding
🏌️: Join the club: homogenous product

🤷: Search me

Roll

References

  1. ↑ I am not making this up: https://www.legalgeek.co/startup-map/. There could be more: the bamboozling way it is set out made it hard to be sure I had go them all. I have not had the heart, or spleen, to repeat the exercise for 2022 but perhaps I should.
  2. ↑ Hyperbole, I am sure. You needn’t write in.
  3. ↑ I owe this observation to Jared T Nelson (@jaredtnelson).
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