nwenzel

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by nwenzel 13y ago
Thanks. Not only do law firms have trouble collecting 100% of billed, they aren't able to bill 100% of their standard rates. [0] The same partner that made the talking/billing comment believes that part of the problem is the amoun
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Post author here. Definitely agree that clients should take time to educate themselves. That's actually the point of the post and the point of reviewing the bill. We can't all start off knowing everything. Hopefully being able to
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Bringing some needed balance to the situation (from the original post by Paul Sieminski http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/striking-back-agains... ) is a good way to put it.
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by nwenzel 13y ago
We (SimpleLegal) just quietly rolled out an integration with Xero. Curious to know what you think of Xero.
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Proving the point about hourly billing... http://www.wevorce.com/ Flat fee billing is the better business model. It's not always possible, but it takes the stress out of watching the clock.
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Post author here. That quote was just his shorthand for saying that if he's advising clients or investors, he's billing for that time. He talks to his clients to tell them how to set boundaries for investors and how to best commun
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Hi. Founder here. In 2012 $20B was billed by the top 100 audit firms. $14B+ on accounting consulting services. Another $14B+ on tax advisory. We're headed in that direction and consulting services as well. Really all time-based billing
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Hi. Co-founder here. Thanks! We're talking to a few law firms now. Small/mid-size firms believe their structure is a competitive advantage over Big Law firms. Our dashboard is a good way for their customers to see that advantage.
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Love the idea. Has a "save the world" aspect to it as well. If all the great ideas that currently go un-launched get pushed into existence sooner, we'll all be better off.
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by nwenzel 13y ago
WeFunder has something like that. You can invest one lump sum in a group of YC companies.
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Only if you take the first step. YC S14 applications are still open.
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Congrats! Pinterest is a great place filled with great people.
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by nwenzel 13y ago
In software there are usually multiple places to accomplish the same thing. I usually ask, "where do I put the work?" I'm usually thinking of the database vs. the framework on the server vs. the client. The post is a great ex
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Right after reading the pg essays, any startup founder should read everything Jason has written. Cuts right to the points that many are too uncomfortable to talk about.
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Google hires Prof Hinton. Facebook counters. There was a subtle point in the article referencing the fact that this challenge has both a software and hardware component. Add in complexities of parallel processing and running on GPUs and you
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Pretty accurate assessment. I almost certainly would have not gotten in had I not had a chance to talk to a few YC alums. Side Note: Jason was absolutely the reason I got in. YC should do whatever it takes to get him to become at the very l
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Billing partners hate reviewing bills. First year associates write some interesting narratives in their time entries. We are working on the best way to provide this service. Most likely working through a partner. We like the idea of an &quo
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by nwenzel 13y ago
I like your thinking! We believe that billing should be fixed, not just reduced. We're starting on the side where we have the most experience and have been able to get the most traction. We see providing evidence-based billing as an im
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Great write-up. My big concern is that legal billing goes the way of medical billing where the whole thing becomes a game. Our goal is to get to clean and fair bill where the client is happy to pay for services rendered and the law firm fee
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Co-founder here. Great points about bigger businesses. I have worked for 10 years with insurance companies, captive finance firms, and other financial institutions with their legal data. Our pricing should be only slightly better than incum
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by nwenzel 13y ago
The actual example was .5 hours to prepare a 1-page form and .5 hours to mail the form. It probably did require return receipt. That's one expensive stamp. The lawyer probably didn't intend to bill that much, but filing out a time
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Word frequency is in use at many larger insurance companies today. You can certainly find problematic bills with word frequency and the hours billed, but you end up with a lot of false positives so you still have to manually review everythi
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by nwenzel 13y ago
You know your way around a legal bill! As bradleyjg points out, some charges make their way onto a bill when they shouldn't. It's usually not malicious. The problem is that legal bills don't get enough attention from the law
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by nwenzel 13y ago
As for the privacy concerns, we use data to train our machine learning models. The outcome of those models includes categorization by activity (internal meetings, phone calls, legal filings, etc.). The "shared" component is for tr
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Co-founder here. Legal bills are not considered "work product" so the client can share them if they choose. The content of legal bills is very important to protect. We have technical safeguards as well as management/process s
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Co-founder here. Charing a percent of savings is an interesting model. We approached customers with it and they pull back from it fairly quickly. It sets up a conflict of interest in that there is an incentive to reduce more than is appropr
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Co-founder here. Thanks! We just saw a ton of money being thrown at a problem that looked like it needed some help being solved. We're seeing growth in insurance, banking, patent heavy companies (hardware), and startups raising money.
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by nwenzel 13y ago
Fantastic post. Just saw an interview on TC talking about the two types of sales. I'll reach out to you to chat. We're definitely top down, but we're hoping to find ways to get our product in people's hands. We do the fr
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by nwenzel 13y ago
If there's anything begging to be fixed, it's the benefits administration process. After using the traditional vendors for my last company, I'm ecstatic to find something better. Think I'm going a little overboard over b
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by nwenzel 13y ago
A few lawyers have reached out to me with questions about our service. First, let me say that I fully understand your concerns and distaste for current bill review and eBilling platforms. I understand and appreciate your point of view. We&#

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