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"law is simply too big and complex to be reduced to simple recurring steps in any important area. " Agree. I'm not a lawyer and I have no relatives that are la
by larrys 14y ago
"law is simply too big and complex to be reduced to simple recurring steps in any important area. "
Agree. I'm not a lawyer and I have no relatives that are lawyers, and nothing to gain by raining on the clerky parade at all.
That said I've been in business for a long long long time and I've dealt with lawyers, paid legal fees, seen the good and the bad and have seen mistakes lawyers have made - even good ones.
Seat of the pants, I think it's a mistake for anyone to take an important step and pay a fee to incorporate this way.
The principles running clerky have nice credentials but as anyone will tell you "speak to 10 lawyers/doctors get 10 different opinions".
It's foolish to not even want to have a conversation discussing specifics which is not the same as having to give up significant equity to get legal advice. It is "always Delaware" or "almost always Delaware"?
I wouldn't advise anyone fresh off the boat to go the clerky route although ironically since I know what I am doing I very well might be a customer! That doesn't mean either that clerky wouldn't be good for some startups in some situations but they don't know that.
As an aside the entire concept of someone giving equity to a lawyer in exchange for legal work is to me an example on the face of how little some people know about business. I've seen countless examples (non high tech traditional world) where business people have a lawyer as a partner which to me makes no sense at all. "He/She will do the legal work". Bullshit. This is like someone thinking that they can buy legal insurance and that their lawyer partner will spend 20 hours a week on their business problems at no charge. 20 hours (arbitrary) that they then have to give up in billing their clients. Not going to happen. [1] For the amount of legal work you need just pay for it and factor it into your costs. This is not partnering with a painter on a home rehab or something like that.
[1] The other fallacy that I've seen is someone feeling that if they are dealing with a lawyer that it is easy to get sued because "it doesn't cost the lawyer anything". It does it costs the lawyer his time and a lawyers time is how they make money. And they know that and if they sense a case or action will sap their time they will run for cover.
- swampthing 14y agoThanks for the comment Larry! Many founders feel comfortable doing things themselves on Clerky, but many also loop in their lawyers (for the reasons you describe). It just makes for efficient use of legal fees, since you are paying your attorney for what they do best (advice and review) instead of rote tasks like word processing, printing, scanning, faxing, etc. I look at Clerky as kind of a stim pack for lawyers (except it doesn't reduce the health of the attorney).
- larrys 14y ago"I look at Clerky as kind of a stim pack for the company-lawyer relationship" If clerky is good and allows lawyers to focus on charging for the things they are good at while avoiding things that they make little money at then you should attempt to market the service to lawyers so they can refer that business to you that you are good at. Similar to what the "Company Corporation" and others do. Generally when I quote prices to someone I am eager to offload anything that I can't make money on and have someone pay directly so it reduces the total amount of my bill and my pricing looks more reasonable.
- swampthing 14y agoDefinitely - we're headed in that direction. It just turns out that attorneys need more features, since they manage a whole bunch of different clients. So we launched with just support for company-side accounts for now :)
- Nimi 14y agoI don't mean to be overly critical, but the obvious question seems to be: Do most YC startups use Clerky? If they do, it seems like a huge endorsement, maybe the only one you'll ever need. If they don't, that sounds problematic... Anyway, best of luck in your endeavors.
- swampthing 14y agoYup, most do! Check out the customers section on our homepage :) For incorporations, we work together with YC to get everyone set up, so pretty much everyone uses us unless they're already incorporated (then Kirsty and YC's lawyers do whatever cleanup they have to). Most companies end up choosing to use us for their seed round documents too (currently in private beta) - we are by far the most popular option for that. Perfectly reasonable question - that's what I'd ask myself!
- Nimi 14y agoOh, sounds great! In that case, maybe you should consider saying so explicitly in your homepage. I read about YC so recognized some names, but my takeaway conclusion wasn't as strong as "most YC companies use this, good enough".