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}}{{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]] | 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]] funded by [[When budget allows|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-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 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. | |||
Now there can be no doubt that the amount | Now 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 [[legaltech entrpreneur|legaltechbro]], 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. | 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. | ||
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> | |||
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. The 277 are all 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|''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 [[legaltechbro]]s 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 | ===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. | This is brave talk, of course. | ||
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===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 — | ||
==Roll of honour, 2021== | |||
*Abogadea <br> | *Abogadea <br> | ||
*Access Solicitor <br> | *Access Solicitor <br> |