One thing to note is that the CA statute of frauds renders certain kinds of oral contracts invalid, unless there is some memorandum of the oral contract is in writing. One such contract, as outlined in CA Civil Code Section 1624(a)(7) is:
> A contract, promise, undertaking, or commitment to loan money or to grant or extend credit, in an amount greater than one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000), not primarily for personal, family, or household purposes, made by a person engaged in the business of lending or arranging for the lending of money or extending credit.
This wouldn't seem to apply to equity financings, but I suspect it applies to debt financings. If that's right, an actual "handshake deal" is not legally enforceable absent the kind of e-mail memorialization that PG is talking about. Of course, a "handshake deal" starts to look a lot like a simple written contract if a handshake alone cannot a deal make.
> It's not "rent seeking" to build a value-added service on top of publicly available information, or even to charge for making obscure publicly available information more easily available.
I'm inclined to agree. But perhaps "rent seeking" or not is not the right debate.
It's hard to tease out how much of the value of WL/Lexis/BL is in comprehensive access to cases and documents vs. how much comes from the kind of value added products/services that you mention.
An interesting question is just how valuable these value added services actually are. Whatever value they provide today might reasonably be discounted by their lack of defensibility going forward. As you noted, there is much room for technological disruption here. One could imagine dramatically better products (my thesis is that the right Silicon Valley startup can build them). If WL/Lexis/BL want to survive in the next 5-10 years, they are going to have to get away from publishing and push technology farther, either internally or by acquiring the very few startups who are doing interesting things in this space. What do you make of that thesis? It sounds to me like your thinking about their value add might be clarified by distinguishing between publishing and technology.
> It's hard to tease out how much of the value of WL/Lexis/BL is in comprehensive access to cases and documents vs. how much comes from the kind of value added products/services that you mention.
Providing comprehensive access to disparate publicly available information is itself a value-add. Should courts submit their opinions to some sort of centralized system instead of posting a link to the PDF on their website? Sure, you can make that argument. But it's hard to say that courts are remiss in not doing so, considering that they are dozens of independent entities. Moreover, someone has to pay to build that system. Categorizing information is not free--Google just makes us think it's free because it charges us by selling our privacy rather than simply asking for a fee. Now it's certainly something that could be done at the public expense, and maybe it should be. But until then, providing comprehensive access to these documents is a value-add.
> One could imagine dramatically better products (my thesis is that the right Silicon Valley startup can build them). If WL/Lexis/BL want to survive in the next 5-10 years, they are going to have to get away from publishing and push technology farther
I can imagine dramatically better products, but not in the next 5-10 years. If history tells us anything,[1] it's that AI is really hard and any technology that relies on advances in AI are further off than we imagine. Google's search engine, at the moment, can't even tell the difference between a real product review site and SEO-optimized, auto-generated garbage. It'll be a lot longer than 5-10 years before I trust some algorithm to tell me whether one case cites another in a positive or negative light.
There are other business models. Westlaw / Lexis Nexus's customers and competitors who do not have this curated information, can get together (via an intermediary perhaps) to curate them better.
> That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct – a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation.
That is terrible writing. Ms. Ortiz should be doubly ashamed.
What you just identified is precisely what Peter is criticizing here. The whole point is that maybe technology can make this fiction less fictitious.
You may think that the law is necessarily more like politics, and that there's little room for code. But I don't see any reason for that in your comment, which is more just a reaffirmation that the status quo exists.
Good points. I probably didn't word that very well. What I'm getting at is that justice is mostly political not because we couldn't make it more rational, but because we really prefer it that way.
Certainly technology can make this fiction less fictitious in the future, but I'm not sure we'll want to use it that way.
All of this can be called "legal services." But the extremes, you two are essentially talking about different markets.
Corporate clients will continue to hire the best lawyers and pay high fees when and because the company is on the line.
Most individuals, on the other hand, do not need a Yale Law grad billing $900 an hour to set up a living trust or LLC.
Obviously there's a whole spectrum in between. Just flagging that "Tech will utterly destroy the legal industry" and "We'll always have top lawyers starting at $160K" may be talking past each other a bit.
I don't disagree re: two markets, but even leaving aside big corporate clients there are barriers to outsourcing work. Individuals tend to have one-off problems. They need someone to represent them in a divorce, they need someone to do a will, etc. It's not clear how some "law center worker" sitting in India is supposed to do those things. If there was a market for it, you think someone would have already set something like this up in Nebraska. You can't quite pay $2 an hour for Nebraskans, but you could probably pay $10-15 and get U.S. licensed attorneys in a cheap cost of living state. Heck, document review work in major metro areas these days only pays about $20-$25/hour and those jobs get tons of applicants.
We’re building software that will radically change how lawyers approach, analyze, and engage with the law.
We're looking to add a designer to our small team of legal-minded engineers (Stanford, Berkeley, Google) and lawyers (Stanford, Columbia).
You should have a record of creating beautiful software, good implementation skills, and a desire to forge a product that will change how justice is delivered in this country.
We are backed by the most visionary investors in the world and are taking a big swing at truly hard problems. We have excellent health/dental/vision benefits, a "no vacation policy" policy, and a great office at 4th and Townsend.
If you're interested in learning more, get in touch: [email protected].
We’re building software that will radically change how lawyers approach, analyze, and engage with the law. We use advanced case law parsing and tech-enabled human review to construct a detailed outline of the law. Leveraging that data, we can offer litigators legal search tools that are an order of magnitude better than existing offerings, as well as detailed analytics on legal arguments and AI tools that automatically assess and assemble litigation documents.
We're looking to add a designer to our small team of legal-minded engineers (Stanford, Berkeley, Google) and lawyers (Stanford, Columbia).
The law is intricate. Communicating it clearly is a serious design challenge. We are looking for someone who can shape not only our look and feel, but also how lawyers interact with the law.
You:
+ A record of creating beautiful software
+ The ability to implement what you design (HTML5, CSS3, JS)
+ Deep, sincere interest in law
+ Desire to forge a product that will change how justice is done
Us:
+ Backed by the most visionary investors in the world
+ Taking a big swing at truly hard problems
+ Excellent health/dental/vision
+ “No vacation policy” policy
+ Great office across the street from 4th & King Caltrain
If you're interested in learning more, get in touch: [email protected].
How do you know if it's true? Think through it yourself. Don't look for a hook that's going to make you feel better about accepting something as gospel.
How do you know if it's true? Think through it yourself. Don't look for a hook that's going to make you feel better about accepting something as gospel.
I am not looking for a gospel. I am looking for a method so that I can understand if and how he's wrong or right.
Some suggestions:
1) Check for yourself that the facts he puts forward are true.
2) Look for notable examples of success and failure, study them closely, and see if they affirm or contradict his teachings.
That said, apart from "facts", little of what he says can be proven as "wrong or right" - he's just imparting to students what he has learned from his own experiences and observations.
It's a complex world. No individual point-of-view can come close to being 100% right 100% of the time.
But people are getting excited about this class because he seems to have developed particularly profound insights into the fundamentals of modern technology businesses - as compared with the many others who study/speak/write about the topic.
Totally agree - this material is better than 95% of business books I've read and I think could be a best seller (certainly in terms of quality, not sure about marketing/promoting it). Maybe you could co-author it with Peter.
