Lawyers are leaving the safe, staid realms of law to build fast-growing, tech-savvy companies. These lawyer-entrepreneurs are creating “legaltech” companies, using advanced technology like artificial Intelligence, to resolve archaic legal practices. This boom in new companies disrupts how legal services are delivered, constituting a $16 billion legaltech market in USA. These unique lawyers are revolutionizing daily tasks of law, including intellectual property, due diligence, contract review, research and expertise automation. Advice from lawyers traversing the off-beat path from lawyer to tech -business leader, to others making the jump, is appended below:
Haley Altman – Doxly
Altman’s idea as partner at a law firm, for a transaction-management and automated-document platform was born when she sat surrounded by mountains of manila folders. She and her team hunted through mounds of documents for just one missing signature page, delaying a multimillion dollar closing. Since 2016, Doxly has managed to raise $2.75 million in funding and advises lawyers not to stress on things you cannot change. You constantly move forward, as every setback provides an opportunity to learn and grow.
Chrissie Lightfoot – Robot Lawyer LISA
Chrissie Lightfoot, a former lawyer is today a consultant, legal/ business commentator, and a bestselling author. In 2016, she developed Legal Intelligence Support Assistant or LISA, the world’s first AI robot lawyer, who is impartial. These are transformational times and new-age lawyers need to ride the ‘AI robot’ wave or risk being left behind in the wake of things.
Nehal Madhani – Alt Legal
Madhani, graduated from University of Pennsylvania Law School and was employed at a top law firm. Inspired to make legal practices more efficient, he resigned, taught himself coding, and started Alt Legal, a cloud-based software firm, to manage global IP filings. As the founder, it’s hard pacing the plans for immediate execution, but has painfully learnt that focusing on getting a few details right is a more effective path.
Joseph R. Tiano – Legal Decoder
Tiano practiced law for two decades as partner at two top American law firms, before creating Legal Decoder for clients lacking analytic tools and data to manage outside counsel costs. Learning from the experience of six investors in Legal Decoder, truly inspired him. They started businesses themselves and understand the emotional ups and downs of entrepreneurship, besides providing guidance, support, and encouragement.
Michael Sander – Docket Alarm
At the New York law firm, Sander found the legal research tools to be inefficient and expensive and twice daily, a paralegal visited the court’s website, entered case numbers, for something new, and repeat this again and again. In 2012, he founded Docket Alarm, providing legal analytics, search, and litigation alerts for the US court system. Leaving your job to found a company is daunting, but break down the ultimate goal into tiny attainable steps and the process becomes manageable.
Andrew Arruda – Ross Intelligence
As a lawyer, Andrew Arruda was distressed seeing the scales of justice favoring the wealthy. He partnered a computer scientist to create ROSS, an AI legal assistant and research tool, leveraging IBM Watson. Arruda advises interested lawyers to start doing something. Our legal background provides a fantastic base for hard work, applying ourselves which can be used to your advantage.