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Our startup signed on with Atrium and they've been superb to work with. The attorneys are great, the pricing is reasonable, and they're very fast at turning aro

Our startup signed on with Atrium and they've been superb to work with. The attorneys are great, the pricing is reasonable, and they're very fast at turning around documents. I never appreciated just how much speedy turnaround can make the legal process more pleasant. I don't think they've quite hit their stride yet with the add-on services. I agree with the comments so far: It's not that difficult to organize your trove of legal documents in Google Docs, and I'd rather control my own hiring doc templates with a general-purpose tool like DocuSign than add another tool in the mix. But the bigger picture here is the fact that they're releasing any such services at all. The chance of a traditional law firm releasing these services is zero, and there are software-based services I really want. Personally, I'm waiting for the tool where I can declare my company policies around NDAs, and then use Atrium NDA (or whatever) to automatically scan the NDA I received, tell me how it violates my policies, and auto-generates a response to the counterparty.

kemitchell 7y ago
Accommodating pointless diversity of NDAs is enabling dysfunction. Have a look at https://waypointnda.com/ https://waypointnda.com/.
- arthurcolle 7y ago
  'DocuSign template .zip' link is broken.
  - kemitchell 7y ago
    Thanks for mentioning! I’ll fix it.
- beefhash 7y ago
  Has this been reviewed by lawyers outside the U.S.? Section 6, the 18 U.S.C. 1833(b) notice seems extremely specific, and I'm worried that there might be other subtleties that make this unusable outside the U.S. and/or other required items for the NDA to function outside the U.S. (The U.S.-centrism in the software industry has always been a pet peeve of mine.)
  - a3camero 7y ago
    Yes. I’m a Canadian lawyer who has corresponded with the author of that NDA. I pointed out the same language and he’s working on a version that’ll account for other countries. The author is keenly aware of this and wants to make it not US-centric.
    - kemitchell 7y ago
      Howdy, a3camero! Indeed, we're currently working on a version 2.0.0. The new release will implement a few small, general improvements, and well as feedback from counsel from a few common-law jurisdictions. beefhash, if you know lawyers from other jurisdictions, please put them in touch with me at kyle@kemitchell.com. I'd love to provide them the latest working draft of 2.0.0 and read their thoughts.
sjy 7y ago
Does your experience with Atrium suggest that this kind of functionality is feasible? Even developing a 'law as code' platform where NDAs can be written by computer experts in a DSL, formally analysed and compiled to English seems like a major engineering challenge, let alone building a system that can accept an unstructured PDF and parse out its legal implications. That's a far cry from the 'busy work' (filling out templates, making sure the right people have signed them, and keeping copies) discussed in this article.
- joshpadnick 7y ago
  At this point in our relationship, Atrium's basically been a really well-run law firm who is economically incentivized to make legal more efficient. They also have significant funding, an experienced CEO, and silicon valley thinking, so yeah I think the foundation for something significant like "law as code" is there, even if it's years away. That being said, I agree the first releases are underwhelming but "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late." [1] [1] https://twitter.com/reidhoffman/status/847142924240379904?lang=en https://twitter.com/reidhoffman/status/847142924240379904?la...
- antpls 7y ago
  Legal English documents are already a "DSL" to non-experts. With recent advances on Neural Network models such as GPT-2, we (engineers, researchers, etc) are closer to be able to analyse any documents written in correct English. It won't be fully autonomous at first, but we can imagine it will help to answer questions such as "given my policies database, do I break the rules defined in that contract?". The tool will give hints, which will be reviewed by an actual lawyer to say the final word. It is the same idea than https://books.google.com/talktobooks/ https://books.google.com/talktobooks/ , but for legal
- woah 7y ago
  I assume they are just figuring out which PDFs from different companies contain the same language and then letting their lawyers compare them

kemitchell 7y ago

Accommodating pointless diversity of NDAs is enabling dysfunction. Have a look at https://waypointnda.com/ https://waypointnda.com/.

arthurcolle 7y ago
'DocuSign template .zip' link is broken.
- kemitchell 7y ago
  Thanks for mentioning! I’ll fix it.
beefhash 7y ago
Has this been reviewed by lawyers outside the U.S.? Section 6, the 18 U.S.C. 1833(b) notice seems extremely specific, and I'm worried that there might be other subtleties that make this unusable outside the U.S. and/or other required items for the NDA to function outside the U.S. (The U.S.-centrism in the software industry has always been a pet peeve of mine.)
- a3camero 7y ago
  Yes. I’m a Canadian lawyer who has corresponded with the author of that NDA. I pointed out the same language and he’s working on a version that’ll account for other countries. The author is keenly aware of this and wants to make it not US-centric.
  - kemitchell 7y ago
    Howdy, a3camero! Indeed, we're currently working on a version 2.0.0. The new release will implement a few small, general improvements, and well as feedback from counsel from a few common-law jurisdictions. beefhash, if you know lawyers from other jurisdictions, please put them in touch with me at kyle@kemitchell.com. I'd love to provide them the latest working draft of 2.0.0 and read their thoughts.

sjy 7y ago

Does your experience with Atrium suggest that this kind of functionality is feasible? Even developing a 'law as code' platform where NDAs can be written by computer experts in a DSL, formally analysed and compiled to English seems like a major engineering challenge, let alone building a system that can accept an unstructured PDF and parse out its legal implications. That's a far cry from the 'busy work' (filling out templates, making sure the right people have signed them, and keeping copies) discussed in this article.

joshpadnick 7y ago
At this point in our relationship, Atrium's basically been a really well-run law firm who is economically incentivized to make legal more efficient. They also have significant funding, an experienced CEO, and silicon valley thinking, so yeah I think the foundation for something significant like "law as code" is there, even if it's years away. That being said, I agree the first releases are underwhelming but "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late." [1] [1] https://twitter.com/reidhoffman/status/847142924240379904?lang=en https://twitter.com/reidhoffman/status/847142924240379904?la...
antpls 7y ago
Legal English documents are already a "DSL" to non-experts. With recent advances on Neural Network models such as GPT-2, we (engineers, researchers, etc) are closer to be able to analyse any documents written in correct English. It won't be fully autonomous at first, but we can imagine it will help to answer questions such as "given my policies database, do I break the rules defined in that contract?". The tool will give hints, which will be reviewed by an actual lawyer to say the final word. It is the same idea than https://books.google.com/talktobooks/ https://books.google.com/talktobooks/ , but for legal
woah 7y ago
I assume they are just figuring out which PDFs from different companies contain the same language and then letting their lawyers compare them