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As a customer of legal work for 20 years, it is also way (way way) faster and cheaper to draft a contract with Claude (total work ~1 hour, even with complex bac

As a customer of legal work for 20 years, it is also way (way way) faster and cheaper to draft a contract with Claude (total work ~1 hour, even with complex back-and-forth ; you don't want to try to one-shot it in a single prompt) and then pay a law firm their top dollar-per-hour consulting to review/amend the contract (you can get to the final version in a day). Versus the old way of asking them to write the contract, where they'll blatantly re-use some boilerplate (sometimes the name of a previous client's company will still be in there) and then take 2 weeks to get back to you with Draft #1, charging 10x as much.

cj 2y ago
Good law firms won’t charge you for using their boilerplates, only the time to customize it for your use case. I anlways ask our lawyer whether or not they have a boilerplate when I need a contract written up. They usually do.
- sebastiennight 2y ago
  That's interesting. I've never had a law firm be straightforward about the (obvious) fact they'll be using a boilerplate. I've even found that when lawyers send a document for one of my companies, and I give them a list of things to fix, including e.g. typos, the same typos will be in there if we need a similar document a year later for another company (because, well, nobody updated the boilerplate) Do you ask about the boilerplate before or after you ask for a quote?
  - cj 2y ago
    I typically don’t ask for a quote upfront since they are very fair with their business and billing practices. I could definitely see a large law firm (Orrick, Venable, Cooley, Fenwick) doing what you describe. I’ve worked with 2 firms just listed, and their billing practices were ridiculous. I’ve had a lot more success (quality and price) working with boutique law firms, where your point of contact is always a partner instead of your account permanently being pawned off to an associate. Email is in profile if you want an intro to the law firm I use. Great boutique firm based in Bay Area and extremely good price/quality/value.

cj 2y ago

Good law firms won’t charge you for using their boilerplates, only the time to customize it for your use case. I anlways ask our lawyer whether or not they have a boilerplate when I need a contract written up. They usually do.

sebastiennight 2y ago
That's interesting. I've never had a law firm be straightforward about the (obvious) fact they'll be using a boilerplate. I've even found that when lawyers send a document for one of my companies, and I give them a list of things to fix, including e.g. typos, the same typos will be in there if we need a similar document a year later for another company (because, well, nobody updated the boilerplate) Do you ask about the boilerplate before or after you ask for a quote?
- cj 2y ago
  I typically don’t ask for a quote upfront since they are very fair with their business and billing practices. I could definitely see a large law firm (Orrick, Venable, Cooley, Fenwick) doing what you describe. I’ve worked with 2 firms just listed, and their billing practices were ridiculous. I’ve had a lot more success (quality and price) working with boutique law firms, where your point of contact is always a partner instead of your account permanently being pawned off to an associate. Email is in profile if you want an intro to the law firm I use. Great boutique firm based in Bay Area and extremely good price/quality/value.