> “One of the things big law partners say when they talk about Atrium is that we get people who wouldn’t make partner,” says Kan. “And I say, they’re the people who are doing the work for you anyway, but they transition out because they hate the lifestyle.”<p>I had some paperwork come back from a fundraise that was riddled with errors. I lost a lot of faith in my lawyers and I had to double check all their work. Not what you expect when you're paying $600/hr.<p>Underneath every partner is the army of associates who actually do the work. I got on the phone with the associate who had handled the paperwork. He was trying to make partner; he was clearly overworked, underslept, and stressed out.<p>I switched to another associate with less experience but who wasn't yet feeling the pressure of making partner. The quality of work massively improved.<p>If Atrium can give work-life balance to lawyers, and give me paperwork that I don't have to double check, then I'm all for it.
I'm very thrilled to announce this round to the world today. I've always looked up to Marc Andreessen and A16Z, and it very exciting to be able to work with them. Fundraising is not a destination, but just a means to get there, and the team is happy to get back to work building Atrium to help fast growing startups with legal.<p>Also, super happy to be working with Michael Seibel again, who you all know is an amazing advocate for startups as CEO of YC.<p>Happy to answer any questions about what we are doing here!
Congrats @justin. I'm curious about culture, as the article mentioned that employees with different backgrounds have very different cultural expectations. Have y'all actively managed/shaped culture? Are you shoehorning non-tech employees into a tech culture, or is it more of a middleground?
Should bots and A.I.s that are displacing humans be taxed?<p>Also what do you think of Bryan's essay - <a href="https://medium.com/future-literacy/a-plan-for-humanity-2bc04088e3d4" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/future-literacy/a-plan-for-humanity-2bc04...</a><p>Specifically: "The future of the human race can be forecasted through a single metric: return on investment (ROI) of intelligence. Our current economic incentives (the engine that drives the world) are perfectly designed to put humans out of business and make us irrelevant as fast as possible."
Curious: how do you get around prohibition for non-lawyers to own law firms ?<p><a href="https://biglawbusiness.com/the-debate-over-non-lawyer-firm-ownership-is-officially-closed-for-now/" rel="nofollow">https://biglawbusiness.com/the-debate-over-non-lawyer-firm-o...</a>
Congratulation @justin, we don't know each other (unfortunately), but damn, you're like a machine: justintv, twitch, and now atrium<p>How do you do it?
Could you give any insight into what problems you're trying to solve with the engineering side of Atrium? When you commonly hear about legal tech, its in the context of e-discovery/case-tracking/forensic tools.
Good luck to Atrium. I've interviewed for them a while back and saw a lot of passion! I personally have a lot of qualms about the legal industry while working at a bunch of startups so I see a lot of innovations possible.
I would like to nominate myself to be an outside Board Observer.<p>JKan and Seibel are two of the best dudes in SV. Adding Marc and Anthony to the mix will make for incredibly fun board meetings.<p>I will take notes if that role isn't already covered.
Great news and congrats, @justin. What's the story behind the moment when you had no plans launching a legal services platform and realizing that this could be a thing? Did you brainstorm ideas with the team or someone told you like, "hey, man, there is this problem in the legal industry" or was it something else?
@justin, do you feel the automation you're developing now will be applicable to other fields of law and do you anticipate branching out into other fields of law over time? Entertainment Law seems like a natural fit based on where tech is going.
Justin, how big do you anticipate Atrium to become? Given how much money flows into legal services, my guess is over $10 billion as a conservative measure. Is there a ballpark figure that A16z or you think of as conservative, ambitious etc?