On Building Git for Lawyers

Reporting back from my biglaw pal I sent this to:

> Big flaw in the product: 60 year old partner who still makes hand edits and has the Secretary scan the pages and send them out of order to the associate

> Second big flaw in the product: specialists edits get rejected because they don’t know the deal points and are just swooping in

I took issue with this as step 4 seems to involve an M&A lawyer accepting/rejecting specialist edits piecemeal, to which he responded "Right, but that doesn’t actually save that much time. It’s the same work that an M&A associate is already doing"

> Third big flaw in the product: big law firms are the least innovative organizations on earth

> Fourth big flaw in the product: having junior associates do menial tasks at $800-950/hr is a feature, not a bug, of law firm business model. So you are solving for something that the target customer doesn’t necessarily want solved.

and there it is :/

> 60 year old partner who still makes hand edits and has the Secretary scan the pages and send them out of order to the associate

We've designed our product to be backwards compatible with existing workflows. It does not require every team member to use the product to add value. Partners who prefer their way of doing things can continue to do so allowing associates to add their drafts to Version Story to create redlines and consolidate changes.

>specialists edits get rejected because they don’t know the deal points and are just swooping in

The possibility of incorrectly rejecting specialists edits exists with or without Version Story. Our product makes it easier to understand what's changed so lawyers can exercise their judgement about these decisions.

> Third big flaw in the product: big law firms are the least innovative organizations on earth

I think this assumption is worth challenging. Millennials are becoming partners at law firms and are spearheading initiatives to update their tech stacks. This is reflected in legal tech budget growth trends (https://www.legalcurrent.com/tech-spending-remains-especiall...).

> Fourth big flaw in the product: having junior associates do menial tasks at $800-950/hr is a feature, not a bug, of law firm business model. So you are solving for something that the target customer doesn’t necessarily want solved.

Making mistakes is not a feature (https://newsletterhunt.com/emails/40489). In the example I outline in the essay, the lawyer made three separate mistakes when manually merging documents.

I assume the fourth point is for billing clients for a high fee while paying a quarter to the associates. But some law firms will use the more efficient tools to take on more cases for the partners to bill on their higher rates. Competition will force the firms to use more efficient tools.

Regarding point 4 --

Sometimes you automate something because you want to do it faster / cheaper. Sometimes you automate something because you need it to be done _correctly_.

I would much rather my critical but menial $900/hr task be done by someone double-checking automated work than the same amount of time being spent doing the menial work.

You could even introduce flaws (in the review step) to catch if you're concerned about the human getting bored and just automatically mashing the "merge" button...

There was a freakonomics[1] podcast about mechanical support of human activities...

[1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/new-technologies-always-sca...

I really hope you're right because I am 1000000% rooting for you. You just need two counterparties (could be two people in the same firm in the same practice!!) to use it to get some value somewhere in the whole process. As a humble software optimist, I believe there's room for this. I told him his critiques also apply to typewriters -> any old word processor -> MS Word, or fax -> email and those still happened so don't go taking an overpaid millenial's skepticism as normative for the whole thing. If Graeber taught me anything, it's that work is a gas and efficiency will not make the firms bill less.

Thanks for the encouragement! We actually went a step further and designed it to provide value if only one person is using it. To your point, getting two counterparties to use it turbocharges the value and creates network effects.

One hundred percent! And you can already see this playing out. More and more large law firms are spinning up technology and innovation teams. This is a huge investment on their part, indicating they're incentivized.

Also, the billable hour is somewhat misunderstood. It is more of a process tool than a hard reality. Repeat clients expect the bill to end up within a certain range. And law firms expect their people to work a certain number of hours.

> Fourth big flaw in the product: having junior associates do menial tasks at $800-950/hr is a feature, not a bug, of law firm business model. So you are solving for something that the target customer doesn’t necessarily want solved.

Also, starting with menial work is how junior associates are trained to do more complex work.

You guys are approaching things 100% backwards. Steve Jobs didn't ask people on the sidewalk what they wanted! He just gave them an iPhone.